UL Flame retardant plastic

[WallyFP]

I have a warehouse that stores empty polypropylene battery cases in racks. Per NFPA 13 - this is a Group A plastic.

The MSDS for this specific plastic indicates that is a UL 94V-0 flame retardant plastic. How, if any, does this affect the commodity class. I've looked on the UL web site and haven't been able to locate any details.

I'd love to be able to lower the commodity class to a III or a IV. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for your time

 

[cdafd]

not into plastics:::

By far the most stringent and also the most widely accepted of such tests is the Underwriters' Laboratory Standard for safety, UL 94, for electrical devices. The test, involving the burning of a specimen in the vertical position, is the one by which most flame-retardant (FR) plastics are rated. In this test, the best rating is UL 94V-0, which defines a flame duration of 0 to 5 sec, an afterglow of 0 to 25 sec, and the presence of no flaming drips that ignite the dry, absorbent cotton located below the test specimen.


a ul 94v-0 rating looks good, does it burn appears yes, how bad?? good question

http://machinedesign.com/article/designing-with-plastics-1115

http://www.ul-asia.com/news_nl/2007-Issue24/page10.htm

 

[WallyFP]

Thanks cdafd.

Your second link seems to confirm what I thought. The small scale testing probably isn't enough to change a commodity classification in a storage configuration.

 

[LCREP]

Nope Group A Plastic

You have to very careful making the leap for a UL/FM test for flammability for a product in one application and saying since it passed it must be OK. Last year at the NFPA annual meeting Tyco reviewed a test on the storage of mattresses on racks they did. They took mattresses that have passed a cigarette test with self extinguishment on the mattresses on the horizontal plane. In real life mattresses are not stored this way in a warehouse. They are stored vertically on the rack, so that is how they did the test. They were not sure if mattresses would burn since they met the consumer product standard for flammability.

Guess what they burned real well, so much for not burning since it met a self extinguishing standard.

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Fire Sprinklers Save Firefighters’ Lives Too!

 

[WallyFP]

Thanks LCREP.

Good example with the mattresses. I saw the same presentation at the SFPE meeting in Atlanta.