ABSTRACT
It is noteworthy that Pc is not necessarily lower than the atmospheric pressure (2.104 Pa) (8,9). Surprisingly, despite their high practical interest, these schemes have rarely been as well investigated, for the unimolecular as for bimolecular POOH decomposition (10-12). Some of their important properties were discovered only very recently. These schemes, in their simplest version presented here, cannot be considered the definitive solution for kinetic modeling of polymer oxidation, but rather, as a good point of departure for further investigations. Their main interest is to express in an unambiguous, mathematical form, validity criteria for kinetic models or experimental approaches and to allow a quantitative description of properties, such as the spatial heterogeneity of oxidation, which is now experimentally well established for polypropylene. The aim of this chapter is to review our recent studies on these topics.
