Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The release of hydrogen chloride from the thermal decomposition of a sample of a commercial rigid PVC has been studied in air and nitrogen between 200 and 300C. It is shown that the dehydrochlorination can be represented by a 3/2 order decomposition with activation energies of 36.1 and 41.5 K cals.mole^-1 in air and nitrogen respectively. The report explains how this kinetic data can be used to predict the total release of hydrogen chloride as a function of time from the decomposition of PVC during either isothermal conditions or non-linear temperature increments as in fires. A comparison is shown between the experimental and calculated release of hydrogen chloride during a temperature programmed experiment between 200 and 300C.