Proposed consolidation, tidying and update of EU Construction Products Regulation fire resistance classes.

Questionnaires will input to EU Ecodesign criteria for cooking equipment and imaging equipment (i.e. printers).

Digital infrastructure specialists DgtlInfra explains data centre fire risks, consequences and causes, with 19 examples of major data centre fires over the last decade.

The “Fremantle Highway” car transport ship fire is raising questions about electric vehicle (EV) transport safety.

Specific new fire risks of electric vehicles require new approaches to prevention, detection and extinction.

Bio-based phosphorus flame retardant achieves UL 94 V-0 in polyvinyl alcohol with good mechanical and UV performance.

Phosphorus PIN FR DOPO was coated on PA6 textile achieving vertical burn self-extinguishing and wash semi-durable.

Review suggests that AI could enable design of cost-effective and safe new PIN FRs and underlines need for LCA.

Marie-Odile Augé, Centrale Lille, France & Daniele Roncucci, Empa / ETHZ, Switzerland - The bio-sourced polymer poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is highly flammable and requires flame retardants to reduce fire risks.

Weronika Tabaka, BAM Germany - Fire stability of carbon fibre – epoxy resin laminates with protective interlayers was tested at bench scale (120 mm x 120 mm) with simultaneous application of mechanical load and direct flame (butane burner).

The 19th edition of FRPM (Fire Retardant Polymeric Materials Conference) www.frpm-23.org was  hosted by Empa, Switzerland, 26-29 June 2023. This is one of the world’s biggest flame retardant conference, with nearly 250 participants, 69 oral presentations and 70 posters.

EU Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability - Martijn Beekman, European Commission, DG GROW - Despite forty years of chemicals regulations in Europe, today sees high levels of citizen concern about chemical impacts on health and on the environment and scientific evidence of widespread impacts of chemicals.

Adrian Beard, pinfa and Clariant - The EU’s “Chemical Strategy for Sustainability” (April 2022, pinfa Newsletter n°138) will bring major changes to chemicals regulation in Europe and these are today being initiated, including the recast of the EU chemicals regulation REACH, the concepts of “Safe and Sustainable by Design” (SSbD) chemicals and of “Essential Uses” of certain chemicals, the announced Restriction of all PFAS (as a class of chemicals).

Chris Slootweg, University of Amsterdam - The phosphorus cycle today exceeds planetary boundaries and leads to widespread water quality deterioration (eutrophication).

Gaëlle Fontaine, Centrale Lille France - Tests assessed smoke and fire behaviour of cross-laminated timber under different oxygen concentrations.

Lei Chen, SABIC - A key challenge to Electric Vehicle (EV) battery pack design is the battery pack structure which includes battery cooling and cell separation to prevent propagation of the whole battery pack in case of failure of one cell.

Richard Clay and Stephen Blair, Polymer Compounders Limited (PCL) - Based in the UK, PCL supply several thousand tonnes per year of performance thermoplastic polymer compounds to a broad range of customers in automotive, healthcare, industrial, white goods and electrical...

Claudia Vogt and Edwin Kroke (Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg, TUBAF), with Tobias Wagener and Alexander König (BASF), Carl-Christoph Höhne and Jennifer Limburger (Fraunhofer ICT).

Several presentations and posters at FRPM addressed recycling.

These pinfa Awards are the first time such prizes have been offered for presentations at FRPM. A total of 14 candidate oral presentations by young researchers were graded for scientific content, presentation quality and oral delivery by experts from fire research and industry.

Iben Hansen-Bruhn, Aarhus University, Denmark, and University of Central Lancashire, UK - Two different ammonium phosphate based PIN flame retardants were applied to 12 mm pine plywood.

Poster and Travel Awards were offered for the first time at FRPM, by the Ingeborg Foundation Germany, for posters from young researchers (51 candidate posters).

Jiuke Chen, Empa - Extruded PET (polyethylene terephthalate) fibres neat or with two different phosphorus PIN FRs (DOPO derivate DOPO-PEPA, phosphonate compound) were tested for mechanical recycling, with twin-screw extrusion – quench – spin-melt – reprocessing cycles (without ageing, total 3 extrusions).

Hannah Flerlage and Steven Beijer, University of Amsterdam - SSbD (Safe and Sustainable by Design) is applied to redesign P FR for reduced environmental hazard using a computer-based approach, starting from the existing PIN phosphorus flame retardant Tri-iso-butyl phosphate (TiBP).