Thermal characterization of xylan-graft-polyacrylonitrile

In this work thermal characterization of two polyacrylonitrile copolymers, which obtained from emulsion polymerization of xylan, a polysaccharide from agricultural waste material (corn cob), initiated with ceric ammonium nitrate, was studied. Copolymers were synthesized at optimum conditions using two different acids, nitric acid and perchloric acid, in stock solutions of ceric ion and labelled as acid name as a subscript (X-PAN _HNO3 and X-PAN _HClO4). Thermal analyses were conducted using differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Data obtained from measurements were analyzed using GNU Octave and QtiPlot. Results showed that thermal decomposition is firstly related with molecular weight of the obtained copolymer. Oxidation of xylan main chain had also an effect on both decomposition mechanism and activation energy for decomposition.