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ARS Home » Southeast Area » New Orleans, Louisiana » Southern Regional Research Center » Cotton Chemistry and Utilization Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #298946
Title: Piperazine-phosphonate derivatives: their flame retardant and thermal degradation properties on cotton fibers

Author
item Nguyen, Monique
item Chang, Sechin
item Condon, Brian

Submitted to: Fiber Society Meeting
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/21/2013
Publication Date: 10/23/2013
Citation: Nguyen, T.D., Chang, S., Condon, B.D. 2013. Piperazine-phosphonate derivatives: their flame retardant and thermal degradation properties on cotton fibers. Proceedings of the Fiber Society Meeting. 2p.

Interpretive Summary: Flame retardants are used to keep flames from completely destroying or at least slowing down the spread of a fire. Lately, research on chemical flame retardants has been focused on phosphorus and nitrogen because the former is the most important constituent in a flame retardant formulation which by incorporating the nitrogen on these compounds could improve the efficiency of the flame retardants. To better understanding the effectiveness of this type of flame retardants, we prepared a phosphorus-nitrogen containing compound and compared its flame retardant properties with those of a structurally related one. The results are overwhelmingly clear: a) With respect to the flammability, the new compound proved its superior flame retardancy on cotton fabric. b) When overheated, the new compound formed better barrier to protect the fabric. c) In general, no significant differences have been observed in burning mechanism between fabrics engrafted with two compounds. The results of this experiment help us better design a phosphorus-nitrogen containing system that meets the most demanding needs in applications.

Technical Abstract: It has been known that phosphorus-nitrogen system shows greater flame resistance in cotton textiles at a lower level than phosphorus used alone. This research aims to compare the effectiveness of Tetraethyl piperazine-1,4-diyldiphosphonate (TEPP) as a flame retardant (FR) for cotton fabric to a previously studied Diethyl 4-methylpiperazin-1-ylphosphoramidate (DEPP), its derivative. The comparison emphasizes on the preparation for both compounds, the treatment of cotton fabric with each, the flame retardant and thermal degradation properties of treated fabrics and the morphological structure of the burned areas of each fabric. In evaluating the flame retardancy and studying the thermal degradation, we gained more knowledge on the flammability, the fire hazard parameter and the course of thermal deterioration of treated fabrics by using standard test methods in textile characterization such as vertical flammability, limiting oxygen index (LOI), microscale combustion calorimetry (MCC) and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). By examining the microstructure of the burning surface, we learned the burning mechanism of the fabric when engrafted with these compounds. The results from the experiment showed the superior action of TEPP on the fabric by similar burning mechanism with DEPP.