Brominated flame retardants continue to offer high performance and cost efficiency for plastic compounds meeting demanding applications. Pierre Georlette, worldwide technical manager for Dead Sea Bromine Group, outlines some recent developments that the company has introduced.
Introduction
Improvements in fire safety throughout the world continue to be vitally important. Already this year fires in China, France and Holland have claimed the lives of 350 people - a figure that could have been dramatically reduced if better flame retardancy of plastics had been applied. This aspect is by far the most important one that should be considered when specifying materials.
However, flame retardants now mean more than just fire safety. In OEM's and consumers' minds, flame retardants must also be outstanding performers during production, life cycle and even after the end of service life during recycling or incineration steps.
A number of new products are now available that meet many of these requirements. This article will look at two of these products, tris(tribromophenyl) cyanurate and brominated trimethylphenyl indan.