Model-free kinetics analysis of decomposition of polypropylene over Al-MCM-41

Both thermal and catalytic decomposition of PP sample is studied to understand the effect of catalyst (Al-MCM-41) on the decomposition behaviour. Mesoporous catalyst (Al-MCM-41) is synthesized by sol–gel methods and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and nitrogen adsorption study. The optimum catalyst composition is found to be around 18.5 wt%, where the reduction in maximum decomposition temperature is around 103 °C. The nonlinear Vyazovkin model-free technique is applied to evaluate the quantitative information on variation of Eα with α for PP sample under both catalytic and noncatalytic nonisothermal conditions.