Update on Flame Retardant Textiles

The book Update on Flame Retardant Textiles: State of the Art, Environmental Issues and Innovative Solutions initially outlines the background statistics and need for flame retardant textiles, the related legislation and regulations, and the associated test methods and performance requirements which have given rise to their enhanced safety.

Then follows the progress achieved in flame retardancy of both natural and synthetic fibres/fabrics moving from the traditional approaches (e. g., chemical finishing and backcoating techniques based on P-, N-, S- and halogen-based chemistries), their related environmentally sustainable issues and possible solutions to those new strategies having possible commercial potential (deposition and/or assembly of architectures, plasma treatments, sol-gel processes, etc.).

More specifically, the fundamental aspects of textile ignition and combustion, the chemistry of current flame retardant textile technologies, including coating and back-coating process, and the improvements obtained are reviewed, taking into account the possible detrimental environmental effects due to the use of halogen-based additives such as certain bromine derivatives.

Then, an overview of the chemical development of flame retardant strategies based on halogen-free compounds is summarised. The third part of the book is devoted to a description of solutions based on nanotechnology.