SuFiP-S

Sustainable and fire-safe plastics based on fully organic phosphorus-sulfur compounds

This project is part of the SuFiP-S project where two departments of Maastricht University (Circular Chemical Engineering, CCE and Aachen-Maastricht Institute for Biobased Materials, AMIBM) collaborate with SABIC. The goal of the SuFiP-S project is to develop sustainable and fire-safe plastics (polypropylene) based on fully organic phosphorus-sulfur compounds.

Polypropylene (PP) is a significant plastic in flame retardant (FR) products in electronics and transportation. Single-molecule FRs like phosphorus-sulfur (P-S) FRs are part of the state-of-the-art research for applications in PP due to their promising FR performance at low concentrations. However, P-S FRs are not commercially used because their decomposition mechanisms are unknown during processing and in the use phase, thus leading to poor recyclability. This project proposes a systematic interdisciplinary study on the degradation, processing, and recycling of PP/FR plastics to lay a scientific basis for developing new PP/FR plastics and increasing their recycling quantity and quality.

The task of AMIBM is to synthesize flame retardants and to investigate their degradation mechanism during processing and recycling conditions via analytical techniques.