Gas solubility of carbon dioxide in poly(lactic acid) at high pressures: Thermal treatment effect

The sorption of carbon dioxide in glassy Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) films was studied by quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) at high pressures. Two thermal treatments, melted and quenched, were performed in PLA with two different L:D contents, 80:20 and 98:2, films and compared with a third thermal protocol, annealed, and used in a previous work. The results obtained show that for pressures higher than 2 MPa, the carbon dioxide solubility is larger in PLA 80:20 than in PLA 98:2, indicating that the LD plays a dominant role on this property. The thermal treatments only affect the gas solubility in PLA 98:2. Sorption isotherms at temperatures 303, 313, and 323 K, below the glass transition temperature of the polymer, and pressures up to 5 MPa were measured and analyzed with three different models, the dual-mode sorption model, the Flory-Huggins equation, and a modified dual-mode sorption model where the Henry's law term was substituted by the Flory-Huggins equation. This last model performs especially well for CO2 in PLA 80:20, due to the convex upward curvature of the solubility isotherms for that system. (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 45: 616-625, 2007.