Reutilization of abandoned molecular sieve as flame retardant and smoke suppressant for thermoplastic polyurethane elastomer

Molecular sieve was applied to chemical industry diffusely as a typical catalyst. Meanwhile, much molecular sieve was abandoned, which leads to the waste of resources and environmental pollution. It became a research hot spot to recycle abandoned molecular sieve (AMS). In this paper, AMS was used as a flame-retardant and smoke-suppressant agent in TPU. The performance of flame retardant and smoke suppressant of samples was tested by cone calorimeter, smoke density test and thermogravimetric/infrared spectroscopy (TG–IR), respectively. The results showed that AMS could improve the performance of flame retardant and smoke suppressant of TPU effectively. The pHRR and TSR declined by 55.0% and 48.4%, respectively, and the luminous flux increased 5.53% when the addition of molecular sieve was 1.0 mass%. TG–IR results showed that AMS can improve the thermal stability of TPU even under nitrogen atmosphere. It can be concluded that AMS has a good application prospect in flame retardant and smoke suppressant of TPU, and a new idea for the disposal of AMS was provided.