The fire-retardant properties of the melamine-modified urea–formaldehyde resins mixed with ammonium polyphosphate

Fire retardancy of melamine-modified urea–formaldehyde resin (MUF) containing intumescent fire-retardant ammonium polyphosphate (APP) (MUF/APP) was conducted by cone calorimeter with surface treatment of medium density fiberboard (MDF). The results showed that the six MUF resins synthesized with different F/(M + U) and M/U molar ratios containing APP significantly improved the fire retardancy of the MDF by prolonging ignition time, reducing heat release rate and total heat release, and decreasing mass loss rate. The fire-retardant properties of the six synthesized MUF/APP acted differently even though each MUF resin containing the same mass ratio of APP. The melamine content in the MUF should not be too high, otherwise it would decrease the fire-retardant properties of MUF/APP. Based on this study, the higher the APP amounts, the better the fire-retardant performance of the resin was. The fire retardancy of MUF/APP increased with the increase in the amount of glue that spread on the material surface. However, only the amount of glue spread exceeded 250 g/m², whereas the ability of MUF/APP in inhibiting heat release did not increase significantly any longer.     

Curing kinetics study of melamine–urea–formaldehyde resin/liquefied wood

The objective of this research was to investigate the effect of liquefied wood (LW) on the cure kinetics and network properties of melamine–urea–formaldehyde (MUF) resins by differential scanning calorimetry. The MUF/LW compounds exhibited two distinct cross-linking processes. It can be assumed that there did not appear to be a coreaction of the MUF with the LW. The overall apparent activation energies (E _a) of the curing reactions were calculated using the Kissinger equation. An nth-order kinetic model was used to describe the cross-linking of MUF/LW compounds, of various compositions, cured at different heating rates. The E _a values for the cross-linking process of the MUF/LW compounds predominantly tended to be approximately 80 and 71 kJ mol^?1 for MUF and LW, respectively. The apparent reaction orders of the MUF cross-linking process of the MUF/LW compounds were in the range 1–2, whereas the n values of the LW were approximately unity or less, which hints to there being a more complex mechanism of this process.     

Characterization of different wood samples using a new combined method of evolved gas analysis and pyrolysis–gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

Evolved gas analysis (EGA) in combination with analytical pyrolysis is presented as a new technique for rapid investigations into wooden materials. In a first analytical step, the thermal behaviour of three wood samples was determined by EGA. Based on these results, analytical pyrolysis–gas chromatography/mass spectrometry was carried out to investigate the influence of wood-specific thermal behaviour and the chemical composition on the results. Furthermore, the influence of sample mass and particle size was examined.