Flame retardant treated wood : An investigation into phytic acid and its ability to act as a flame retardant agent

Sammanfattning: Flame-retardant coatings have been serving their purpose since the romans ruled Europe. These products have been developed through the years, by mixing and synthetizing solutions, which have resulted in effective, although questionable, products due to their impact on the environment and our health. This matter has been addressed earlier, predominantly regarding fabrics. Now is the time to approach this issue by finding an environmentally and health friendly flame-retardant, that can be applied on wood. Phytic acid is a phosphorus based organic compound which is found abundant in nature and could potentially act as a non-toxic flame-retardant. The acid can form other complexes which could add additional flame-retardant mechanisms and desired characteristics of a flame-retardant. This potential flame-retardant was investigated using two different methods. The first method includes two test series which sought to explain how properties as concentration of phytic acid, pH and different additives affected flame-retardant behaviour. The first method was later changed and refined into the second method, to add higher reliability and validity to the conducted tests. The new method implemented additional analytical methods such as differential scanning calorimetry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to investigate particular compounds. The results from the thermogravimetric analysis show that wood samples which were coated with the flame-retardant, had twice the mass percentage remaining compared to the untreated wood samples.