Publikation – Impact of experimental conditions on TGA measurements
A new publication from us has appeared in the Fire Safety Journal. The full article is freely available here.
Title: The influence of experimental conditions on the mass loss for TGA in fire safety science
Authors: Karen De Lannoye, Corinna Trettin, Alexander Belt, Ernst-Arndt Reinecke, Roland Goertz und Lukas Arnold
Abstrakt:
A thermogravimetric analyser (TGA) measures the mass loss of a sample as function of temperature, during a predefined heating program. The results are applied for developing reaction kinetics in fire safety science. It is assumed that the sample and the apparatus are in perfect thermal equilibrium. Therefore, the analysis ignores any apparatus or sample specific aspects. However, different experimental and material parameters, like the reacting atmosphere or sample mass, influence the observed mass loss. This research work illustrates the impact of experimental and material conditions on the measurement results. Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) is used for this study because of its important role in fire safety science. The influence of different atmospheres, sample mass, colour and flow rates was examined in three different TGA devices at heating rates between 2 K/min and 80 K/min. The major difference was observed for different atmospheres, inert versus synthetic air atmosphere. A difference up to 75 °C in onset temperature was found. The flow rate does not have any influence under inert atmosphere. The colour of the samples has a small influence on the mass loss rates. When comparing different devices, it was found that the peak temperature differs less than 10 °C under inert atmosphere. This contribution discusses and compares the observed influence of the different conditions.
