Thermal Degradation Kinetics Analysis of Ethylene-Propylene Copolymer and EP-1-Hexene Terpolymer

Hassam Mazhar; Farrukh Shehzad; Sung-Gil Hong; Mamdouh A Al-Harthi

doi:10.3390/polym14030634

Thermal Degradation Kinetics Analysis of Ethylene-Propylene Copolymer and EP-1-Hexene Terpolymer

Polymers (Basel). 2022 Feb 7;14(3):634. doi: 10.3390/polym14030634.

Authors

Hassam Mazhar¹, Farrukh Shehzad¹, Sung-Gil Hong², Mamdouh A Al-Harthi^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia.
² TS&D Center, S-OIL Corporation, Seoul 07793, Korea.
³ Center for Refining and Advance Chemicals, The Research Institute, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

LLDPE is a less crystalline polymer with vast industrial and domestic applications. It is imperative to understand the synthesis, processing conditions, and thermal degradation mechanism of the co- as well as terpolymers. This paper reports the in-situ synthesis and thermal degradation studies of the ethylene-propylene copolymer and ethylene-propylene-1-hexene terpolymer and its nanocomposite with ZnAL LDH sheets. The 1-hexene dosing during the in-situ process influenced the product yield and immensely affected the thermal stability of the resultant polymer. One milliliter 1-hexene in-situ addition increased the product yield by 170 percent, while the temperature at 10 percent weight loss in TGA was dropped by about 60 °C. While only 0.3 weight percent ZnAL LDH addition in the terpolymer improved the thermal stability by 10 °C. A master plot technique and combined kinetics analysis (CKA) were deployed to access the thermal degradation mechanism of the synthesized polymers.

Keywords: degradation kinetics; ethylene-propylene copolymer; ethylene-propylene-1-Hexene terpolymer; layered double hydroxides (LDH); master plots; polymer nanocomposite; polymerization; thermal analysis.