Formal-kinetic evaluation of polyaddition reactions — results of a round-robin test, initialised by the working group ‘Polymers’ of the German Society for Thermal Analysis (GEFTA)

A simple and well-known polyaddition reaction is used as test reaction. The formal-kinetic evaluation of the data sets from 11 participants of laboratories in industry, universities and manufacturing companies permits representative and well-founded conclusions. In spite of always possible statistical and systematic measurement errors and mathematical artefacts, all calculated individual parameter sets for the most probable formal-kinetic model allow reliable predictions of the reaction behaviour for any complex temperature–time conditions. The simultaneous evaluation of non-isothermal measurements at different heating rates and isothermal data sets at various temperatures is not only possible but even highly desirable. The DSC as well as other thermoanalytical methods are in combination with multivariate kinetic analysis, a powerful tool for process prediction and optimisation.