11th National and 1st International Conference on "Trends in Fire safety and Innovative Flame Retardants for Plastics"
The 11th National and 1st International Conference on „Trends in Fire safety and Innovative Flame Retardants for Plastics " took place on 24-25 November 2010 in Würzburg, Germany, at the „Süddeutsches Kunststoff-Zentrum" SKZ and had around 100 participants.
The conference started with Trends in Fire Safety and two presentations on fire safety requirements for thermal insulation in building focussing on the developments in the EU and China, as well as a presentation on new fire protection approaches in electromobility with regard to the emerging markets for electrical cars.
Research Projects and Studies dealt with a study on bus fire safety, experimental and numerical investigations for higher standards following catastrophic bus fires, and with the EU Transfeu project on improved fire safety and toxicity classification in rail vehicles (EN 45545-2). Two Short Communications on another EU Project, the Polyfire study on upscaling fire retardant nano-filled unsaturated polyester resins, and a project on flame protection with specific intumescent coatings (Fraunhofer Institute ICT) closed this session.
The next session went into Innovative Flame Retardants and Flame Retarded Polymers. It started with a paper on bench scale methods showing how to combine test methods and evaluate basic fire parameters for flame retarded polymer development. A series of presentations dealing with green flame retardants for biopolymers, flame retardants for textiles based on phosphoramidates, status and trends in flame retardant engineering plastics, new halogenfree flame retardants for polyolefin films and thin walled applications, the use of polymeric brominated and phosphorus-containing flame retardants, new polyurethane spray coatings with excellent fire safety properties, as well as the synergistic effect of nitrogen-containing and mineral compounds with phosphinates gave a comprehensive overview on progresses in flame retardancy.
Two papers discussed new developments in electronic applications: the first explained why the office and consumer electronics industry is increasingly promoting green design in electronics. Here, one of the main objectives is the conversion to halogenfree products; current status, options and cost implication were discussed. The second paper on printed circuit boards dealt with current and more stringent fire safety requirements in railways and aircraft for base materials and discussed how to meet them by the use of suitable combinations of resin systems and reinforcement materials.
The conference programme is available at: http://www.skz.de/DEU/pdfs/01010033.pdf