The effect of boric acid-borax on the pyrolysis characteristics of poplar oriented strand board.

In order to explore the effect of flame-retardant boric acid-borax on the pyrolysis characteristics of poplar oriented strand board (OSB), a TGA /DSC1/1600HT thermogravimetric device was used to analyze the thermal decomposition of boric acid-borax for retarding the inflamation of poplar oriented strand board at a heating rate of 10 ℃/ min and a final temperature of 700 ℃. The results showed that boric acid-borax restrained a major rapid pyrolysis process in poplar OSB. With additional amounts of flame retardants, the characteristic temperature of the maximum rate of weight loss increased. The rate of pyrolysis in the carbon residue of flame-retardant poplar OSB increased markedly. The pyrolysis process of flame-retarding poplar OSB complied with the Ginstling-Broushtein equation, which suggests that the mechanism of pyrolysis in flame-retardant poplar OSB is one of spherical symmetric tri-dimensional diffusion. The activation energy in the rapid pyrolysis of OSB was 101.690 kJ/mol without any flame-retardant, 116.635 with 9% boric acid-borax and 129.225 kJ/mol with 12% active acid, indicating that adding boric acid-borax to poplar OSB increases the amount of energy required in the pyrolysis process.