Kinetics of thermal degradation of polymers

The thermal degradation of polymers has been studied quite extensively using thermogravimetric measurements. For the kinetic description, most of the times single rate heating data and model-fitting methods have been used. Since the thermal degradation of the polymers is a very complex reaction, the choice of a reliable model or a combination of kinetic models is very important. The advantages or the disadvantages of using a single heating rate or multiple heating rates data for the determination of the kinetic triplet have been investigated. Also, the activation energy has been calculated with the isoconversional and model-fitting methods. The reaction model was determined with the model-fitting method. The limits of all these procedures were investigated with experimental data of the thermal degradation of the poly(ethylene adipate) (PEAd).