A STUDY ON ENHANCING THE FLAME RETARDANCY OF POLYPROPYLENE YARN WITH BORON COMPOUNDS

Abstract

Functional properties such as; water resistance, flame retardancy, antibacterial efficiency etc. are required from textile products. One of the most commonly demanded products among functional textile products is the flame-retardant textiles. In this study, it is aimed to produce polypropylene filament yarn with permanent flame retardancy functionality by adding boron compound, which is Anhydrous disodium tetraborate powder (particle size < 38 micron), to the fiber structure during melt spinning process. In this study two different yarn samples are produced with anhydrous disodium tetraborate content by mass ratios of 2% and 5%. A control polypropylene filament yarn sample is also produced with no additive. By this way, three samples are produced by a conventional BCF polypropylene melt spinning machine with the same production parameters. Then, three knitted fabric samples were produced flat knitting machine. Limiting Oxygen Index (LOI) and vertical flammability tests were applied to the samples. According to results an important level of increase for LOI value is obtained with the sample which has 2% boron compound additive. Nevertheless, there is not a consistent effect of increasing boron content in yarn structure for LOI value. The reason of this situation may be resulted due to the uneven distribution of the boron compound in the yarn structure because of the particle size.