A Comparative Thermal Analysis of Fire-off Treated Cotton, PET and Co/PET Fabrics

Abstract

The present paper investigates the capability of MCC and TGA methods by testing the thermal performance of commercially available flame-retardant chemical called Fire-off on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and cotton (Co) fabrics and their corresponding blends (Co/PET). Fire-off was applied to the fabric through impregnation method and the resulting properties of these fabrics were assessed in terms of combustion behavior by use of micro combustion calorimeter (MCC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). TGA results revealed that Fire-off could greatly enhance char residues of cotton, PET and Co/PET fabrics at high temperature region. MCC results indicated that Fire-off treatment could significantly decrease the heat release capacity (HRC), heat release rate (HRR), total heat release rate (THR) and peak heat release rate (pHRR) of cotton, PET and Co/PET fabrics. According to comparison results, a near-perfect agreement between MCC and TGA data were found in terms of degradation temperatures and mass loss rates of fabric samples.