3rd International Symposium on Flame-Retardant Materials & Technologies (ISFRMT 2014)
The 3rd International Symposium on Flame-Retardant Materials & Technologies (ISFRMT 2014) took place in Hefei, China on June 17-19, 2014. It has been hosted by the State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (SKLFS) at the Hefei University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). The symposium covered the latest academic and industry flame retardants research and development as well as fire safety activities on Chinese and international level. The topics covered were:
• Fundamental aspects in fire behavior and in flame retardancy
• Fire retardancy of polymers and bio-based polymers
• Fire behavior of composite materials
• Fire retardancy of fibers and textiles
• Nanoscience and synergy
• Fire protection and protective coatings
• Industrial applications
• Modeling and simulation in fire
• Regulation, standardization and fire testing
• Environmental aspects, fire toxicity and smoke
The symposium was very well attended with about 200 participants. The program consisted of 14 keynote lectures, 28 presentations and 63 posters, which gave an excellent overview of current status and future developments in flame-retardant materials and technologies.
The focus was on the chemistry and applications of phosphorous flame retardants and synergistic systems as well as on nanocomposites and intumescent systems in thermoplastics (focus on engineering plastics), elastomers, thermosets (mainly epoxies), as well as biopolymers and textiles. Two quite interesting overviews showed the general and commercial developments of flame retardants based on bromine, phosphorous, nitrogen, silicon, sulphur, inorganics (metal hydroxides and oxides, boron, nanocomposites) and carbon (expandable graphite, carbon nanotubes, graphene).
The role of flame retardants in the gas and condensed phases was described in some presentations showing the effectiveness of phosphorous vs. brominated synergistic flame retardant systems.
International status and trends in fire safety regulations, testing and standardization activities and their impact on the use of flame retardants were discussed. The minimization of fire toxicity and smoke development of different flame retardant systems in various polymers was presented and their dependence on the mode of action (gas vs. condensed phase) shown.
The ISFRMT 2014 symposium details are available under:
http://www.isfrmt.org/2014/index.html