In a paper that I'm reading, it states that:
The presence of chlorine atoms in polyvinyl chloride make it flame resistant
and I'm just wondering why the presence of chlorine atoms will make it flame resistant. To the best of my knowledge, burning something is just providing a material with enough activation energy such that it can react with oxygen to produce products such as carbon dioxide and water. If so why does the chlorine prevent this process in any way?
Answer
PVC is not truly flame resistant, it does decompose on relatively gentle heating (around 150 °C) However, the process produces significant volumes of hydrogen chloride, that is not flammable and isolates the plastic from the flame. This makes makes PVC self-extinguishing or fire-retardant.
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