New natural material as antioxidant for polyethylene

Abstract EN

Humic acid is the fraction of humic substances that is not soluble in water under acidic conditions (pH < 2) but is soluble at higher pH values and can be extracted from soil by various reagents.

It is dark brown to black in colour and contains many functional groups that allow it to be very good additive for polymers and other materials.

In this paper, we used the humic acid as antioxidant in the range (100ppm-1000ppm ) of polyethylene free from additives.

The result shows better stabilization for the humic than the butylated hydroxyl toluene (BHT).

DSC technique was used to evaluate the stabilization efficiency of the antioxidant with the polyethylene isothermally at 200oC under oxygen atmosphere by measuring the Oxygen Induction Time (OIT).