Thermal Degradation of Natural Polymers

Abstract

The thermal degradation of sodium hyaluronate, xanthan and methylcellulose was evaluated by thermogravimetric and infrared analysis. Kinetic parameters such as activation energy and pre-exponential factor were determined considering the Ozawa and Freeman–Carroll methods. The results suggest changes in the degradation mechanism with the fraction of mass loss for both the studied polysaccharides. The activation energy values determined by the Freeman–Carroll method are higher than those obtained by the Ozawa method under the same conditions, probably because in the first method a first order reaction was assumed and the thermal history effects were eliminated since only one TG curve was used to determine the kinetic parameters. Low thermal stability was observed for polyanions e.g. sodium hyaluronate (Na-Hy) and xanthan(XT) in comparison with methylcellulose (MC) which is a neutral polysaccharide. By infrared spectroscopy, it was observed that at low temperatures there occured only the scission of the exocyclic groups for both polysaccharides and that the scission of strong links in the backbone occurred at high temperatures, in agreement with the kinetic parameters determined for the degradation reaction.