Determination of the degradation apparent activation energy of acrylonitrile/acrylic acid copolymers

Acrylonitrile/acrylic acid copolymers were prepared by H2O/dimethyl formamide suspension polymerization technique. Differential scanning calorimetry was used to investigate the degradation of acrylonitrile/acrylic acid copolymers in air. The apparent activation energy of degradation of the copolymer was calculated with the Kissinger method. Effects of copolymerization conditions on the apparent activation energy of copolymer were studied. It has been found that increasing the dimethyl formamide concentration in the solvent mixture led to a gradual increase (97.3–149.4 kJ mol−1) in the apparent activation energy of degradation of the acrylonitrile/acrylic acid copolymers. The apparent activation energy decreases with increase in acrylic acid concentration, and this change became less prominent as the acrylic acid/acrylonitrile weight ratio is more than 5/95. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 100: 4668–4671, 2006