Fire Resistance of Wood Impregnated with Soluble Alkaline Silicates.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Research Letters in Materials Science Volume 2007, Article ID 31956, 4 pages doi:10.1155/2007/31956 Research Letter Fire Resistance of Wood Impregnated with Soluble Alkaline Silicates Carlos Alberto Giudice1, 2 and Andrea Marisa Pereyra1, 2 1 Centro de Investigacion y Desarrollo en Tecnologıa de Pinturas (CIDEPINT), calle 52 e/121 y 122, La Plata 1900, Argentina ´ ´ 2 Universidad Tecnologica Nacional (UTN), calle 60 y 124, La Plata 1900, Argentina ´ Correspondence should be addressed to Carlos Alberto Giudice, cagiudice@ Received 23 September 2007; Accepted 7 November 2007 Recommended by Luigi Nicolais The aim of this paper is to determine the fire performance of wood panels (Araucaria angustifolia ) impregnated with soluble alka- line silicates. Commercial silicates based on sodium and potassium with 2.5/1.0 and 3.0/1.0 silica/alkali molar ratios were selected; solutions and glasses were previously characterized. Experimental panels were tested in a limiting oxygen chamber and in a two- foot tunnel. Results displayed a high fire-retardant efficiency using some soluble silicates. Copyright © 2007 C. A. Giudice and A. M. Pereyra. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1. INTRODUCTION Expansion values indicate, in the first intervals of tem- perature, an almost lineal increase; whereas a faster rise was Woods and their subproducts are materials of