Microscale combustion calorimeter—application and limitation

SUMMARY A flammability evaluation tool that requires only milligram size sample is very attractive for plastic material development and quality control. One such instrument that has gained importance in recent years is the microscale combustion calorimeter (MCC). In this study, a novel application using the MCC to quantify flame retardant mechanism efficiency is introduced. The results demonstrated that the qualitative understanding of the mechanism can be quantified. The factors that affect the quality of the MCC data were also discussed. It was found that factors such as flow rate perturbation, sample weight, oxygen level, loading/types of the additives, and method of the test have strong effects on the data quality. The results indicate that caution should be taken when operating the test and interpreting the MCC data.