Permanent flame retardant and anti-smoldering compositions

Abstract

When alkali metal and/or alkaline earth metal tetraborates in a water suspension are suitably treated with ammonia and sulfuric acid, sulfurdioxide or phosphoric acid, they undergo a three-step transformation resulting in a mixture of ammoniumpentaborate, the corresponding alkali metal and/or alkaline earth metal salt(s): sulfate, sulfite or hydrophosphate and ammonia (Equation 1). Alternately, tetraborates undergo the same three-step reactions upon their treatment with equimolar amounts of ammoniumsulfate, ammoniumsulfite or diammoniumhydrogenphosphate, while the liberated ammonia can be boiled off with distilling water. This application deals with the discovery of highly effective, permanent flame retardant compositions which also possess excellent antismoldering, noncorrosive and fungal resistant properties when properly applied on cellulosic fibers, cellulose-lignin fiber insulation materials.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.