GT70
Symposium: S01 - General Session Poster Presentation
Viscoelastic Properties of Vis-Breaking Polypropylenes
Nobile Maria Rossella (1)*, Moad Graeme (2), Habsuda Jana (3), Li Guoxin (2), Nichols Lance (2), Dagley Ian (4)
(1) Department of Industrial Engineering. University of Salerno - Fisciano - SA - Italy, (2) CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering and CRC for Polymers - Victoria - Australia, (3) Monash University, Department of Materials Engineering and CRC for Polymers - Victoria - Australia, (4) CRC for Polymers - Victoria - Australia
In this work, hydrogen peroxide is used as a green initiator to cause scissioning of polypropylene (PP) with water as the only by-product, replacing the organic peroxides that are usually used. The rheological properties of a commercial polypropylene and of the scissioned samples are determined by dynamic rheology and an inversion procedure for converting the linear viscoelastic data into molar mass distribution has been adopted. The results presented show that the molar mass distribution of the PP polymer is narrowed on scissioning. The process is found to produce polymers similar in molecular architecture and behavior to organic peroxide cleaved materials, the results of which are given as a comparison in this work.