Thermal stability of poly(vinyl chloride) with epoxidised soybean oil as primary plasticizer

Epoxidised soybean oil (ESBO) has been tested as a primary plasticizer in suspension PVC. The stabilization of the material with different traditional stabilizers has been evaluated and compared to a compound with PVC-ESBO only. Surprisingly, the addition of stabilizers seems to decrease the stability of PVC-ESBO. Traditional stabilizers, for instance Ca/Zn-stearate have been evaluated as well as metal carboxylates regarding yellowness index and UV-Vis absorption. Among the metal carboxylates, a decrease in initial discolouration, i.e. yellowness was observed with addition of Zn-stearate whereas the addition of Al-stearate improved the colour after ageing compared to PVC-ESBO without stabilizer. The stabilizing mechanism of ESBO itself, without the addition of stabilizers, has also been investigated. Analyses with ion chromatography of ESBO extracted from PVC samples without stabilizer revealed that the chlorine content of ESBO had increased when ageing the sample. MALDI analysis revealed that hydrochloric acid likely had attached to the ESBO. Reactions between ESBO and PVC were found through NMR analysis. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.