Co-oxidation kinetic model for the thermal oxidation of polyethylene-unsaturated substrate systems

Emmanuel Richaud (1) , Bruno Fayolle (1) , Jacques Verdu (1) , Jozef Rychlý (2)

1 PIMM - Laboratoire Procédés et Ingénierie en Mécanique et Matériaux
2 Polymer Institute

The thermal oxidation of polyethylene (PE) impregnated by the methyl esters of unsaturated fatty acids (UFEs) was studied using chemiluminescence, and infra-red spectrophotometry. It was shown that the presence of UFEs accelerates the PE aging process. This can be interpreted as a co-oxidation phenomenon. In this study, the previously established models for PE and UFEs self-oxidation have been coupled in order to develop a co-oxidation model. Using the existing rate constants for the PE and UFEs selfoxidations, this model can simulate the complex shape of the kinetic curves of PE-UFE co-oxidation

Mots clés: Polyethylene; Methyl esters of unsaturated fatty acids; Co-oxidation; Kinetic modeling; Chemiluminescence

Domaines: Polymères; Matériaux; Mécanique [physics.med-ph]

Emmanuel Richaud, Bruno Fayolle, Jacques Verdu, Jozef Rychlý. Co-oxidation kinetic model for the thermal oxidation of polyethylene-unsaturated substrate systems. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 2013, 98, pp.1081-1088. ⟨10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2013.01.008⟩. ⟨hal-00996704⟩