Fabrication of fire-retardant polyurea and its functional characterizations

Abstract

This projectis proposed toevaluatepolyurea coatings for use in industrial applications. For such applications, their fire resistant properties need to be improved. The work reported here is divided into two parts. In Part 1,differentbase polyurea formulations were developed and evaluated by hardness test, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and flammability test. The goal was to replace portions of the polyurea backbone to improve the flame retardancy. Themain difference between thesamplebackbone is oneutilized an aromatic diisocyanate(MDI) while the other sample replaced the diisocyanate to isophorone diisocyanate (IPDI) which is an aliphatic diisocyanate. Flammability testdetermined that the AR3sample yielded the best results between the control samples forlongertime to ignitionand elapsed time. It is believed that the aromatic diamine and aliphatic diisocyanatemixed together produceda synergistic effect in improvingthe flame properties. In Part 2 of this work, the aromatic and aliphatic based polyurea was used as the base formulation and various combinations of flame retardant additives were incorporated in an attempt to further improve the flame properties. Flammability testindicated that the best combinations included talc and melaminepolyphosphate.