Polymer materials are more and more widely used in construction, chemical industry, military, transportation and other fields. Due to the flammability of polymer materials, flame retardant technology has attracted worldwide attention.
    With the sustained and rapid development of China's overall economy, China's flame retardant industry has ushered in a great development opportunity, but also faces severe challenges. The production and consumption situation of flame retardants in China is developing continuously, with an average annual consumption growth rate of more than 20%. Since 2002, the domestic consumption of flame retardants has increased sharply, and the increased market share mainly comes from the electronic and electrical appliances market and automobile market.
    The development trend of flame retardants is to pay more attention to environmental protection and ecology while improving flame retardancy. In this context, some traditional brominated flame retardants have been under the pressure of increasingly stringent environmental protection and flame retardant regulations, forcing users to find substitutes for brominated flame retardants, and will also promote the emergence of new flame retardant materials. These new flame retardant materials will have low heat release rate, low smoke generation and low toxicity, and the flame retardant efficiency will not be reduced. Because people are very cautious about the use of brominated flame retardants, it casts a shadow on their development prospects.
    However, due to the historical status of brominated flame retardants in the field of flame retardancy, and in many application fields, it is difficult to find suitable substitutes, so brominated flame retardants are still an irreplaceable choice in Europe and other countries. However, it will be one of the obvious development trends to look for substitutes of brominated flame retardants (especially decabromodiphenyl ether) so as to gradually realize halogen-free and ecological flame retardants. In the future, the global consumption of brominated flame retardants will grow slowly, and the substitutes will continue to increase.
    It is estimated that the annual growth rate of flame retardant consumption in China will reach 15% in the next five years. At present, there is a big gap between China and developed countries in terms of varieties and dosage of flame retardants. With the strengthening of national requirements for flame retardant technology, the development of flame retardants in China will have a better broad prospect. We should improve the ability of development and innovation, and promote the flame retardant industry to develop in the direction of environmental protection, low toxicity and multi-function.