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ICL Industrial Products is making significant breakthroughs in the marketplace by expanding its flame retardants portfolio. ICL-IP offers PolyQuel®P-100, a polymeric and reactive solution for fire safety in electronic printed circuit boards. For polyurethane foams, the Company has recently launched its reactive VeriQuel R-100 for thermal insulation rigid foams and VeriQuel F-100 for flexible foam applications. These new products are in line with ICL-IP’s ongoing efforts to provide sustainable and efficient flame retardants to the marketplace, as it has done in recent years with its FR-122P and TexFRon®4002 products, and they represent a significant addition to the wide portfolio of ICL’s polymeric products such as FR-1025, FR-803P and high molecular weight brominated epoxies. Read more on ICL’s flame retardants products.
Innovative, Sustainable and Cost-Efficient Flame Retardants: VeriQuel®-phosphorus based FR series for rigid and flexible PU foams; PolyQuel®-reactive, polymeric phosphorus-based FR series for Printed Wired Boards.
In addition to developing new products, ICL is also working to improve the use of its products. ICL created its SAFRⓇ methodology to help customers choose which products to use for different applications.
TexFRon®4002 is a polymeric flame retardant for coating textiles and paints. It is designed to provide a high-level fire-retardant solution for textile and adhesive products. The product was the first bromine-based flame retardant to be awarded recognition in accordance with the Oeko-Tex standard 100, “Confidence in Textiles”.
The use of TexFRon 4002 in paints has achieved high scoring by external flame test labs (EN 13823, Single Burning Item testing, and ASTM-E84), while having a translucent appearance that exposes the surface nature (for example wood texture).
LaqFRon® 40, a dispersion of polymeric flame retardant, is manufactured via an emulsion polymerization process. As a result, LaqFron® 40's particle size distribution is even, with a low D50. It allows excellent light transmittance and transparency in waterborne paints and lacquered films. It is easily incorporated in different water-based chemistries and exhibits high flame retardancy efficacy.
These products, with a polymeric backbone, provide superior fire safety benefits without potential environmental drawbacks like bioaccumulation.
In recent years, the circular economy has become a prominent issue in both developed and emerging countries. One major issue relates to recycling plastic-based articles, allowing re-use and significant waste saving at the post-consumer stage. For fire safety reasons, plastics used in the electronics and electricity industries and their applications comply with stringent standards. Such compliance is achieved by introducing flame retardants at the compounding stage, ensuring that injection molded articles comply with these standards.
A major issue associated with recycling flame retarded compounds is the properties’ resilience, or to what extent recycled articles maintain their initial characteristics and, more specifically, their mechanical properties.
In that context, ICL-IP has invested significant resources developing sustainable and recyclable flame retardants as well as putting them to work in a wide range of applications and formulations. ICL has reviewed the use of FRs in two major electric and electronic (E&E) applications and how the product performed as a recycled product. It reviewed how the plastics and the FRs embedded in them can be recycled and reused.
From the findings of this review, it appears that ICL-IP’s Polymeric Brominated flame retardants not only allow mechanical recycling over several cycles, but also contribute to maintaining critical mechanical properties over time.
Another major challenge in the recycling industry is separating banned substances from newer, recyclable, flame retardants in black plastics. SMX technology was selected for study by the International Bromine Council (BSEF), and the North American Flame Retardant Alliance (NAFRA) as a tracer enabling specific FRs identification, for end-of-life recycling purposes of plastics made articles. The technique also offers the potential to use rapid plastic sorting methods that promise to improve recycling yields, and simultaneously addressing OEM traceability and value chain compliance goals for easy additive identification and reportable levels of recycle content.
To date, several ICL FRs have successfully been incorporated together with SMX specific tracers in different plastic matrixes widely used in home appliances and electronic applications. A phase 1 report with identification levels is expected very soon and industry discussions are already forming around scaled testing during 2021.
ICL-IP conducted carbon footprint Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) research. The study was conducted by Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), a global strategic consultancy and assessed the carbon footprint of a number of plastic TV housings.
There are a number of options available to manufacturers of electronic housing components, including flame-retarded plastics or metals with inherent fire-retardant properties. This assessment highlights ICL’s FRs benefits in the context of life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, compared to emissions from other electronic equipment housing options.
The results of this study conclude that among existing plastics options, flame retarded HIPS by ICL-IP's FR-245 product is the best option of those assessed, with significantly lower carbon footprint than flame retarded PC/ABS by BDP. Results indicate that the carbon footprint of flame retarded ABS by F-2100 is lower compared to the PC/ABS option.
Metallic options did not appear to emit as much GHG emissions per unit as expected, given their relative weight and carbon intensity. Steel was slightly above the ABS product but better than PC/ABS, while aluminium (if 60% recycled is selected) was similar to or slightly worse than HIPS, subject to uncertainty.
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