Kinetics of the pyrolysis process of terpene acrylate homopolymers

The kinetics of the pyrolysis process along with the thermal behavior and evolution of gaseous decomposition products of differently structured, highly solvent and chemically resistant terpene acrylate homopolymers in inert atmosphere, poly(geranyl acrylate) and poly(citronellyl acrylate), were studied by means of the TG/DSC/FTIR-coupled method. In this work, two kinds of model-free-kinetic algorithms, differential Friedman and integral Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS) methods were combined to obtain the energetic profile in continuous mode as a function of the transformation degree (α). The obtained results were discussed in terms of energetic demand at each degradation stage through the dependence of E(α) on α, and its relationship with the global reaction rate (dα/dt).