Development and Char Morphology Analysis of Siloxane Based Intumescent Fire Retardant Coatings

Fire security has noteworthy thought for the protection of structure to serve inhabitants. Intumescent Fire Retardant Coatings (IFRC) are used worldwide and have compel discharging gases on degradation to form a porous protecting and char layer securing substrate. An IFRC extends ordinarily of its thickness on introduction to flame and shield the basic substrate. The purpose of this research is to synthesis siloxane based epoxy resin to clarify intumescent fire coating and study its effect on char morphology, thermal performance and gaseous emission. The siloxane epoxy based resin is used to develop the intumescent coating with mixture of expandable graphite (EG), ammonium poly phosphate (APP), melamine, boric acid, polyamide amine as a hardener and Zirconium Oxide as filler. Four different formulations were developed and tested on char expansion, heat shielding, char morphology and composition. The coatings were tested using Bunsen burner for 1 hour. The result shows that by adding 2.4 weight% of Zirconium Oxide to the formulation improves the heat shielding effect towards substrate. The char morphology was characterized by using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) after the furnace test. X-ray Diffraction (XRD) results confirmed the presence of graphite, borophosphate, boron oxide and boric acid in the char. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) proved that by increasing the weight% of Zirconium Oxide in the formulation enhanced the residual weight of the char. Pyrolysis Gas Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy confirmed that formulation F4 releases less gaseous product in terms of type and concentration.