Flame retardants | additives feature
Subramaniam Narayanand Marshall Moore of great lakes Solutions introduce
Emerald 1000 and present the results of comparison tests with decaBDE and other alternative flame retardants
A new, versatile flame retardant for olefinic and styrenic polymers
Known for its excellent efficiency and versatility as a flame retardant (Fr), decabromodiphenyl ether (de- caBDE) has been widely used in electronics, wire and cable, insulation, textiles, transportation, and other applications for several decades. However, it is rapidly be- ing phased out due to a combination of restrictions that have been placed on its use in Europe and the uS, plus a voluntary industry initiative to halt the production and sale of the product in the uS by major manufacturers. Emerald 1000, a newly developed polymeric
brominated Fr from great lakes Solutions, a chemtura business, is designed to be an alternative option for a wide variety of resins including high impact polystyrene (HipS), acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS), polypro- pylene (pp) and polyethylenes (pEs). This new Fr is one of the first products in the business’s new Emerald product line. in addition to being engineered as a more sustain-
able alternative, Emerald 1000 also offers the advan- tage of being a ‘drop-in’ replacement. The additive has been designed to be a free-flowing powder with a high bromine content, high thermal stability, good dispersion properties and excellent compatibility with a variety of plastics. Furthermore, it requires little if any changes to
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formulations or manufacturing processes and is effective in most applications where decaBDE was used. The new Fr has been designed to exhibit improved
compatibility with many different polymer systems. unlike decaBDE, which disperses into a polymer as a discrete particle without any softening, Emerald 1000 partially softens during melt compounding at the typical process temperatures of most styrenic and olefinic resins. This characteristic provides improved compat- ibility and thus improved physical properties. Some other alternative Frs, such as
tris(tribromophenyl) cyanurate which is identified as ‘Fr3’ in our tests, melt below the polymer processing temperatures. This results in a plasticising effect, a behaviour commonly referred to as ‘melt blending’. The use of melt blending additives can lead to a reduction of the material’s heat deflection temperature (HDT), a measure of heat resistance under load, or adversely affect other properties, such as the impact strength of the resulting blend. Because Emerald 1000 has been designed to have the same effect on physical properties and melt viscosity in a plastic formulation as decaBDE, it is advantageous for compounders, fabricators and end-
December 2011 | compounDing worlD 49
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