Polymer additive analysis by pyrolysis-gas chromatography. III. Lubricants.

Lubricants are widely used in thermoplastic polymers to increase the overall rate of processing or to improve surface release properties. Because of the low level of lubricants normally used in a polymer, it may not be possible to analyze the additive directly by common spectroscopic or thermal chemical techniques. However, lubricants as well as other additives in the polymer can be qualitatively analyzed by pyrolysis-gas chromatography (Py-GC) after extraction. In this work, several lubricants have been studied to demonstrate that Py-GC is a viable tool to investigate lubricants. The advantages of using Py-GC in the analysis of lubricant have also been discussed.