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Determination of polymer crystallization kinetics with the NPK method

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Abstract

Since 1998, the NPK method developed by R. Serra, J. Sempere and R. Nomen is used by many research groups to simulate and even sometimes to better understand the thermal behavior of many chemical reactions. The NPK method has never been used for crystallization processes, nor pure products or polymers. It is well known that the degree of crystallization of a polymer is a function of its processing and has crucial consequences on its final properties, so a considerable number of papers have been published to describe this phenomenon. Between them, we can find the description of phenomenological models like the ones of Lauritzen–Hoffman, Avrami, Šesták–Berggren or Sbirrazzuoli or functional methods like the model-free method of Vyazovkin. Our work aims to study the applicability of the NPK method to a polymer crystallization phenomenon from thermal analytical data and to verify that the information obtained agrees with the most accepted models. This contribution shows the first results working with isotactic polypropylene crystallization during the cooling down of melt material.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Prof. Carlos Juárez, M.Sc. Violeta Chichique and to the students Oscar Carías, Albert Puigdellibol, César García and Wendy Torres for their collaboration in this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas, San Salvador, El Salvador

    Frida Monzón & María D. Rovira

  2. Universidad Ramon Llull, IQS School of Engineering, Barcelona, Spain

    Julià Sempere & Rosa Nomen

Authors
  1. Frida Monzón
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  2. María D. Rovira
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  3. Julià Sempere
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  4. Rosa Nomen
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Frida Monzón. The first draft of the manuscript was written by all authors, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Frida Monzón.

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Monzón, F., Rovira, M.D., Sempere, J. et al. Determination of polymer crystallization kinetics with the NPK method. J Therm Anal Calorim 147, 10089–10093 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-022-11320-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-022-11320-9

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