The combustion products of polymeric materials. III: GC–MS Analysis of the combustion products of polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene and polyamide

Abstract

A series of gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric analyses was carried out on polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene and polyamide in CAB 4.5 and CAB 650 chambers in the flaming and non-flaming combustion mode. The combustion products formed were identified and used to characterize the combustion process in both chambers; procedures were selected for testing polymeric materials for the dangerous effects of their combustion products.

A simple approach to on-line oxidative pyrolysis-capillary gas chromatography—Mass spectrometry

“…The resulting pyrogram is shown in Figure 2B and Table II gives the identification of the main compounds. The polystyrene (PS) backbone decomposes mainly to the monomer (peak 5), dimer (peak 19) and trimer (peak 31) of styrene and to 1,2-diphenylethane (peak 16) [6,9]. Comparing the oxidative and non-oxidative profiles, several degradation compounds resulting exclusively from oxidation can be detected and are characterized by hydroxyl, aldehyde or ketone groups.…”

“…Comparing the oxidative and non-oxidative profiles, several degradation compounds resulting exclusively from oxidation can be detected and are characterized by hydroxyl, aldehyde or ketone groups. The main compound is identified as benzaldehyde and results from radical oxidation of the styrene monomer [6,10]. Between 15 and 22 minutes, several oxygenated derivatives of the styrene dimer were also detected and some of them were identified as aldehydes or ketones.…”

“…In most set-ups, steady-state non-flaming or pyrolytic conditions are simulated in furnace type reactors and the toxic headspace fraction is sampled either by static or dynamic headspace sampling. In the latter case, impingers filled with solvents or tubes packed with adsorbents like Tenax or Chromosorb are applied in the off-line mode and are then liquid or thermally desorbed prior to gas chromatographic analysis [4,6]. These systems suffer from the disadvantage of being cumbersome and discriminative.…”

Combustion and fire retardancy of aliphatic nylons

“…Apart from relatively heavy chain fragments, CO, CO 2 , H 2 O, NH 3 , HCN and NO x were detected by many authors 26. 30–35 Two approaches to estimation of the toxicity of combustion and degradation products of nylons have been reported: (1) analysis of the volatile products and calculations of their toxicity, and (2) toxicity tests with animals.…”

“…A series of gas chromatographic–mass spectrometric analyses was carried out with nylon 6 in combustion chambers in the flaming combustion mode at 600 and 1000 °C, and the non‐flaming combustion mode at 500 °C 33. The combustion products of polyamide 6 contained compounds with diverse structures, whereas non‐flaming combustion yielded a relatively small overall amount of volatile product.…”