Physico-chemical aspects of polyethylene processing in an open mixer. Part 9: complements to the experimental kinetics of oxidation product formation

The Arrhenius-plots of the experimental rates deduced from fitting the data to two elementary rate equations yield many values for the activation energy. However, usually, these values cannot be related to well-defined chemical reactions. Even if the values look reasonable, there remains considerable doubt concerning the correct attribution to some reaction. In fact, further work shows that the apparent agreement is mainly fortuitous. It seems mandatory to take a new approach at data interpretation.