Kinetic parameters of thermal destruction of the copolymer of polyethylene glycol fumarate with acrylic acid in inert medium

Abstract

Thermal decomposition of the copolymer of polyethylene glycol fumarate with acrylic acid (p-EGF:AA) of two different compositions synthesized earlier was studied in the present work. TG and DTG curves prove that decomposition takes place in several stages. According to thermogravimetric curves it has been found out that for the copolymer with higher content of acrylic acid the decomposition of the copolymer’s sample is started at higher temperatures. It has been shown the shift of the temperature of decomposition’s start to the higher area with the increase of heating rate which is necessary for the detorsion of macromolecular coil. Experimental data processed using graphical methods of Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose and Friedman allowed us to calculate the activation energy of the thermal decomposition process. It has been established that the copolymer with the composition of 21.03:78.97 mass.% has lower meaning of activation energy than the one with the composition of 68.96:31.04 mass.%. As a result of calculation one can see that the meanings found out using these methods depend slightly on conversion. Using Achar-Brindley-Sharp method and the method of invariant kinetic parameters the kinetic triplet of the decomposition process has been found which was used to build the calculated curve. The dependences of g(α) on α using these parameters showed a satisfactory agreement of calculated curves with the experimental ones. One can conclude that the decomposition process of the copolymer of polyethylene glycol fumarate with acrylic acid is well described with of D3 (three-dimensional diffusion) model.