Antioxidants loss kinetics in polyethylene exposed to model ethanol based biofuels

This work deals with a study of stabilizers loss by extraction in ethanol-cyclohexane mixtures simulating ethanol based biofuels. As theoretically predicted, cyclohexane has an extractive power considerably stronger than ethanol one and its effect predominates, even in fuels containing 50% ethanol. Antioxidant depletion displays first-order kinetics indicating that loss kinetics are extraction rather than diffusion controlled. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.