Synthesis of halogen and formaldehyde free bio based fire retardant for cotton

Abstract

Poor fire retardancy of the cotton fabric is one of its major drawbacks. Therefore, there are numerous fire retardant chemistries which have been developed and being applied onto the cotton fabric. However, most of them are either less effective, toxic, contain formaldehyde or halogen. Therefore, in this research bio based chemical citric acid is polymerized with di ammonium hydrogen phosphate. Various parameters like level of citric acid, di ammonium hydrogen phosphate and temperature of polymerization were optimized. Fabric treated with newly developed optimized recipe exhibited superior char length, char width, limiting oxygen index % and crease recovery angle as compared to conventional toxic formaldehyde based fire retardant. SEM and FTIR analysis also confirmed the successful application of the polymer onto the treated fabric.