Thermal behavior of polystyrene synthesized in the presence of carboxymethyl cellulose

Summary

Study of the decomposition kinetics is an important tool for the development of polymer recycling in industrial scale. In this work, parameters such as activation energy, frequency factor and reaction order, were measured under dynamic conditions. Flynn-Wall-Ozawa, Van Krevelen, Horowitz-Metzger, Coats-Redfern, Madhusudanan and Vyazovkin methods were used to determine the kinetic parameters. The analysis of the results obtained by the Coats-Redfern method shows that the thermal degradation process of LDPE and HDPE corresponds to a phase boundary controlled reaction (mechanism R2). This method shows that the reaction order values of LDPE and HDPE are about 0.7 and 0.6, respectively.