Flame retardant behavior of diammonium phosphate in the presence of potassium nitrate

Various studies have been reported the use of flame retardants for treating cellulose that can aid in the development of novel flame retardants to protect cellulose-based products. The development of eco-friendly flame retardants with high contents of Phosphate(P), Potassium(K) and Nitrile(N) at the molecular level has also been reported. Potassium nitrate(KNO3) is also one of main materials in fire extinguishing systems to generate solid aerosol as an extinguishant. The condensed aerosol fire extinguisher produced the fire extinguishing aerosol which extinguished the fire efficiently through the endothermic reaction of Potassium(K) compounds, thus terminating chain reactions catch Hydrogen(H) and hydroxy(OH) radicals. The enhanced retardant effect of PN addition to Diammonium Phosphate (DAP) for cellulose might be due to the generation of potassium extinguishing agents which undergo an endothermic reaction with N2 and H2O, t hus catching radicals of H a nd OH. Experiments were carried out by using a Mettler Toledo DSC1 thermal analyzer. All experiments were conducted under N2 atmosphere and scan rates of (5~50 K min-1). The reproducibility of DSC results was < 2 % for all experiments. The activation energy of this process was calculated using the Kissinger Method, which is one of the most popular approaches for determining kinetic parameters through thermal analysis. The Kissinger Equation employed herein is as follows: ln(q/T2p) = -Ea/R(1/Tp) + ln(RA/Ea) The results reveals that the retardant capability of DAP in the presence of PN was studied by using cellulose as fuel. Our results depict that there is an optimum ratio of PN to DAP to achieve high retardancy for cellulose. The extinction time of flame and char residue is reduced due to synergic effects between DAP and PN. Our results demonstrated that DAP added with a small concentration of PN could decrease the activation energy and increase the dehydration of cellulose.