High thermodynamic stability study of PLA/LCNF composite

Abstract

Thermal degradation behaviors of one composite constituted by poly(lactic acid) (PLA), cellulose nanofibrils (CNF), and lignin–cellulose nanofibrils (LCNF) in a nitrogen atmosphere were studied using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). It was found that the thermal degradation stability of the PLA/LCNF composite was improved when compared to PLA and PLA/CNF. The Flynn–Wall–Ozawa method was used to determine the apparent activation energy of the composite samples which was based on a set of TGA data obtained at different heating rates. It was shown that the conversion functions calculated by means of the Coats–Redfern method depend on a set of kinetic models, which could be concluded that using the model-fitting methods couldn’t reveal the complexity of the thermal degradation process and the isokinetic relationship method was used to estimate a model-independent pre-exponential factor (ln A) corresponding to a given degree of conversion.