Radio-Oxidation in Polyolefins: Non-Stationary Kinetic Conditions

In the last fifty years, many authors have been interested in the radio-oxidation processes occurring in polymers. The polymer degradation under ionising radiations in presence of dioxygen is well described by a radical chemistry. The radio-oxidation process occurs in three steps: the first one is the production of radicals P degree by interaction between the polymer and the ionising radiations; then radicals P degree react spontaneously with O2 solved in the polymer giving a peroxy radical POO degree which attacks the polymer forming a hydroperoxide POOH and a new radical P degree (propagation). The third step corresponds to the termination step, that is bimolecular reactions between radicals. It is generally assumed that the stationary state is rapidly reached and consequently that the oxidation induced during the built-up period of the radical concentration can be neglected. However, to our best knowledge, the temporal evolution of radical concentrations before reaching the steady state regime has never been studied in details. We recently performed a complete study of oxygen consumption under electron irradiation for an EPDM elastomer. An analysis, as function of dose rate and oxygen pressure, and assuming steady state conditions, allowed extracting all the kinetic constants. Starting for these experimental data, we calculated the build-up of the radical concentration by solving numerically the differential equations with help of the Minichem code. We conclude that, in fact, the oxidation induced during the built-up period is negligible. In this paper we show that [P degree] could present a quasi-stationary plateau before reaching its stationary level. Consequently, the full radical time evolution is essentially determined by two characteristic times for reaching the quasi and stationary levels and three concentrations: [P degree] and [POO degree] at the stationary level and [P degree] at the quasi-stationary plateau. We show that realistic approximations can be found in order to establish analytical expressions of the temporal evolution of [P degree] and [POO degree]. The time evolution obtained analytically is in total agreement with the exact numerical solution. We want to emphasize that the analytical approximations show that the different parameters governing the build-up period are very simply linked to some kinetic constants of the radio-oxidation mechanism. This clearly shows that time-resolved experiments are a very attractive approach for determining accurately the kinetic parameters governing radio-oxidation