Isoconversional Cure Kinetics of Modified Urea-Formaldehyde Resins with Additives

As a part of abating formaldehyde emission of urea-formaldehyde resin, this study was conducted to investigate the rmalcure kinetics of both neat and modified urea-formaldehyde resins using differential scanning calorimetry. Neat urea-formaldehyde resins with three different formaldehyde/urea mol ratios (1.4, 1.2 and 1.0) were modified by adding three different additives (sodium bisulfite, sodium hydrosulfite and acrylamide) at two different levels (1 and 3wt%). An isoconversional method at four different heating rates was employed to characterize thermal cure kinetics of these urea-formaldehyde resins to obtain activation energy ($E{\alpha}$) dependent on the degree of conversion (${\alpha}$). The $E{\alpha}$ values of neat urea-formaldehyde resins (formaldehyde/urea = 1.4 and 1.2) consistently changed as the ${\alpha}$ increased. Neat and modified urea-formaldehyde resins of these two F/U mol ratios did show a decrease of the $E{\alpha}$ at the final stage of the conversion while the $E{\alpha}$ of neat urea-formaldehyde resin (formaldehyde/urea = 1.0) increased as the ${\alpha}$ increased, indicating the presence of incomplete cure. However, the change of the $E{\alpha}$ values of all urea-formaldehyde resins was consistent to that of the Ea values. The isoconversional method indicated that thermal cure kinetics of neat and modified urea-formaldehyde resins showed a strong dependence on the resin viscosity as well as diffusion control reaction at the final stage of the conversion.