OP-II-3

PP-III-75TG [%]0-10-20-30380°C400°C420°C440°C460°C480°C-40-50-60-70-80-90-10010 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130Time [ min]Figure 1. TGA curves of the polymer mass loss during thermal degradationof PS at different temperatures.One can observe that time necessary to complete the degradation of PS inisothermal process is related to the process temperature. At the lowest temperature(380°C) the degradation process takes over 95 minutes while at 480°C only 9minutes. The estimated activation energy for this process was about 90 kJ·mol -1 .There is also a clear difference between the time of thermal and catalytic degradation— non catalytic process goes on several times longer than catalytic one (the time ofthe reaction depends on the kind of used catalyst). The degradation of PS wasstudied also in dynamic conditions with different heating rates to determine theinfluence of a heating rate for given catalyst on the reaction temperature.GC-MS analyses of liquid products were carried out to define the influence ofapplied catalyst on the hydrocarbons mixture composition. In the thermal degradationof PS, many aromatic hydrocarbons with a wide-range distribution of carbon atomnumbers are formed. In contrast, the oils produced in the catalytic degradationprocess are known to contain a narrower distribution of hydrocarbons.References[1]. Mucha M.: Polimery a ekologia, Wydawnictwo Politechniki Łódzkiej, Łódź 2002.[2]. Stelmachowski M.: Termokatalityczna degradacja polimerów, Polska Akademia Nauk, Łódź 2003.[3]. Pielichowski K., Njugana J.: Thermal degradation of polymeric materials, Rapra TechnologyLimited, Shawbury 2005.[4]. Reverte C., Dirion J.L., Cabassud M.: J. Anal. Appl. Pyrolysis 2007, 79, 297–305.[5]. Abate L., Blanco I., Pollicino A., Recca A.: J. Therm. Anal. Calorim. 2002 70, 63–73.AcknowledgementsAuthors acknowledge financial support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education(Grant no. N205 025 32/1352).581