Antioxidants loss kinetics in polyethylene exposed to model ethanol based biofuels

Abstract

This work deals with a study of stabilizers loss by extraction in ethanol–cyclohexane mixtures simulating ethanol based biofuels. As theoretically predicted, cyclohexane has an extractive power considerably stronger than ethanol one and its effect predominates, even in fuels containing 50% ethanol. Antioxidant depletion displays first-order kinetics indicating that loss kinetics are extraction rather than diffusion controlled.