Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed in San Francisco on July 6, 2013. The fuselage caught fire and smoke came out. Despite the fire, most of the passengers survived smoothly. It is a chemical widely existing in life, but often neglected - Flame retardant, that is, to gain valuable escape time for these passengers.
Wreckage
The wreckage of the crashed AA Flight 214
As a conventional means of fire prevention, flame retardants are widely added to a variety of materials. However, doubts about flame retardants, especially those containing bromine, have never ceased. Many people think that flame retardants do not play a very important role in fire fighting. They can also spread in the environment and endanger human health. Is that the truth?
Flame retardants are a kind of additives which can delay the ignition time and inhibit the spread of fire. They can inhibit the occurrence of combustion reaction through a variety of principles of action. Inorganic flame retardants such as aluminium hydroxide and magnesium hydroxide are heated to produce water, which absorbs a lot of heat and insulates oxygen. Bromine flame retardants can capture free radicals in combustion reaction and terminate chain reaction. In addition, some flame retardants can make the surface of materials foam and expand rapidly and carbonize to form a protective layer.
From plastic products, synthetic leather, chemical fiber fabrics to foam insulation materials in buildings, there are polymer materials everywhere in our lives. These materials have many advantages in performance, but they have one obvious defect: they are easy to burn, which buries the potential fire hazard. In order to eliminate hidden dangers, the use of flame retardants to improve the fire resistance of materials has become an indispensable measure.
Nowadays, flame retardants are mainly used in transportation, electronic and electrical equipment, furniture and building materials. Adding flame retardants can't make the material fully resistant to fire, but it can still reduce fire and win valuable escape time for people caught in the fire. In the fire space, because of the accumulation of flammable gases and heat, the phenomenon of "flash" may occur - all kinds of flammable substances fire simultaneously in 1 to 2 seconds. The appearance of flame retardants can effectively avoid this situation. Take the cathode ray tube TV with plastic case as an example. If it has not been flame retarded, the escape time is less than 2 minutes when people start fire. With the help of flame retardant, the escape time can be increased to more than 30 minutes.
The role of flame retardants in fire safety has been confirmed. The European Commission estimates that the use of flame retardants has reduced fire deaths in Europe by 20% over the past 10 years. Greenstreet Berman study conducted by the British government in 2009 showed that, since the enactment of the Fire Safety Regulations for Furniture and Indoor Furniture, the number of fire deaths decreased by 54 cases annually between 2002 and 2007, the number of non-fatal burns decreased by 780 cases annually, the number of fire accidents decreased by 1065 cases annually, and the fire prevention and treatment of furniture also depended on flame retardants.
In 2009, a fire broke out in CCTV TV TV Cultural Center, which spread rapidly, causing serious damage to the exterior wall. Among them, the main reason for the spread of the fire is that the flame retardant performance of the thermal insulation material on the outer layer of the building is not up to standard. It can also be seen that flame retardants are by no means indispensable.
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