pinfa’s vision for sustainable fire safety
Adrian Beard, pinfa Chairperson and Clariant, outlined pinfa’s vision, which is to improve fire safety and to reduce smoke impacts, whilst improving the environmental and health profile of flame retardants, their compatibility with recycling and their biodegradability. PIN flame retardants are the way forward.
Both voluntary or industry systems (such as ecolabels or Global Automotive Declarable Substance List GADSL) are increasingly restricting halogenated FR. Further pressure is coming on both halogenated FRs and on antimony with regulatory policies on EcoDesign, end-of-life and recycling, or with POP or other classifications. The TCO health and environment label now has a “Positive List” of accepted FRs, including a number of PIN FRs, as well as excluding halogens. pinfa companies are actively engaged in carbon footprinting and sustainability evaluation of product portfolios, and with external, independent product assessments (e.g. GreenScreen, under which several PIN FRs have obtained Benchmark 3).
PIN fire safety for e-vehicles
Electric and hybrid cars bring specific new fire safety challenges for materials. Manufacturers are at the same time looking for more sustainable materials, avoiding halogens (because of impacts of acid release on electronics), and offering mechanical performance and reliability, aesthetic quality, light weight as well as recyclability.
Pinfa facilitates dialogue through the automobile supply chain on materials needs and FR solutions. pinfa previously organised workshops in China 20181 (140 Participants) and in Japan (60 participants2, within the ECME Conference) and Europe 2019 (100 participants). These workshops showed the interest in these questions and the need for better understanding of changes in materials specifications for e-vehicle systems, such as electrical performance, heat dissipation, durable orange colour, reduced halogenhydric acid release and challenges around batteries. A specific question identified was that of new standards. This online webinar aims to continue this dialogue.
1 = see pinfa Newsletter n°96 https://www.pinfa.eu/media-events/newsletter/
2 = pinfa Newsletter n°103 https://www.pinfa.eu/media-events/newsletter/ – and photo
3 = see pinfa 2019 Annual Report https://www.pinfa.eu/media-events/brochures-publications/