Practical Guide to Smoke and Combustion Products from Burning Polymers

Practical Guide to Smoke and Combustion presents one of the most complete overviews of this important topic, covering smoke generation (including obscuration, toxicity, corrosivity), small and large scale smoke assessment, regulation of smoke, and methods of controlling smoke by plastics formulation. In particular this book focuses on the assessment of fire hazard and fire risks from combustion products and is an important book for plastics processors, regulatory personnel, and fire research and safety engineers. This book presents a state of the art overview of smoke formation from natural and synthetic polymeric materials. General mechanisms of smoke formation are discussed. This book also presents a discussion on why different commercial polymers have different intrinsic tendencies to generate smoke and ways in which smoke generation can be assessed. This Practical Guide also discusses mechanisms and general approaches for decreasing smoke formation. This book also gives an overview of flammability tests for measuring smoke formation. In particular, the criticality of assessing smoke formation in realistic scale is discussed. An overview is provided of regulations, codes and standards for critical application of polymeric materials where smoke generation is controlled. Common commercial approaches to decrease smoke formation in specific polymer systems and for specific applications are also presented. Finally, Practical Guide to Smoke and Combustion provides a balanced opinion on the controversial issue of smoke and associated combustion gases.