New Green Material To Fight Fire Revealed

Scientists are constantly trying to figure out new and improved methods to fight fire.  One such idea has been proposed by material scientists in Texas.  They have developed a flexible coating in micrometer size that will keep the cotton cloths away from flame will protect plastic foams from melting. These new coatings are sought as a replacement to the present widely used flame retardants. Designers say that these are relatively safer that the usual ones as these are non toxic in nature.

Charles Wilkie of Marquette University in Milwaukee, a fire-retardant specialist but not a part of this project say that “fabric fires are so thin and being able to fore retard them is a big deal” but he certainly feels he project to be pretty impressive.

Yu-Chin Li and Jaime Grunlan of Texas A&M University and a part of the research team unveiled this project at American Chemical Society national meeting in Denver. The team mainly aimed at finding an alternative to the brominated fire retardants because of them being toxic. Their initial prototype of the material consisted of alternating layers of garden variety clay and a commercial polymer. But this was dropped as the polymer did not match with the clay. This was then replaced by an inexpensive material called chitosan: a compound extracted from shrimp and lobster shell. The new compound was disappointing for cotton cloths but worked perfectly for plastic foams. An experiment with one piece of foam without the coating of the compound burnt to ashes in a 10 sec of propane flame but similar pieced with 10 dual layer of the compound remained unburnt.

Further research by the team finally produced a compound for fabric clothes. They used a material that intumesce i.e. undergo a foaming reaction at higher temperature. Similar experiment with the cotton fabric produced the desired results. The fabric with coating only charred but didn’t burn.

Charlie feels that in actual scenario the flame will be more intense and will last longer. So the materials can only slow down the burning speed but will ultimately end. While Vince Baranauskas of NanoSonic Inc. in Pembroke, a company manufacturing materials including fire retardants, points out that nano layered flame retardants may not be commercially feasible. The manufacturing cost will much more than the fabric itself.  But these are great ideas that with further refinement and hard work can be improved and will be very beneficial for humans.