The quandary aspects of non-isothermal kinetics beyond the ICTAC kinetic committee recommendations

Abstract

The paper discusses of some issues of thermoanalytical kinetics that have not been addressed in the previously published CTAC kinetic recommendations. Namely the true nonequilibrium degree of conversion, factual and fictional modeling, nucleation-growth exponents, cold crystallization, effect of undercooling, logistic equations, model-free methods, meaning of activation energy, Arrhenius and non-Arrhenius approach, thermal gradients, misfit of Kissinger method and the true meaning of temperature measured during rapid temperature changes. Insensitiveness of traditional kinetic model discrimination is attributable to the equivalency of exploited plots (from 1/T to divergent T—legitimate for a narrow temperature interval) and further smoothing effect due to using logarithm. The most important impact on kinetic data evaluation is a persisting neglect of thermal inertia when evaluating DTA peaks presented on every occasion of real measurements. The majority of 149 references are focused on papers published in Thermochimica Acta.