An Article Submitted to INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL REACTOR ENGINEERING An off-lattice Flory-Huggins approach of the partitioning of bulky solutes between polymers and interacting liquids Olivier Vitrac∗ Guillaume Gillet† ∗Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique,
[email protected] †Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique,
[email protected] ISSN 1542-6580 Copyright c 2009 The Berkeley Electronic Press. All rights reserved. An off-lattice Flory-Huggins approach of the partitioning of bulky solutes between polymers and interacting liquids Olivier Vitrac and Guillaume Gillet Abstract The desorption of additives and polymer residues from materials (P) is of sig- nificant concern for a wide range applications, including polymer ageing, off- odors, safety of materials in contact with food or water. With diffusion coef- ficients, partition coefficients between P and hydrogen-bonding liquids (L), de- noted Ki,L/P for a solute i, are fundamental quantities to assess the loss of plastics constituents. For a polymer with a crystallinity c, they are defined as ln(Ki,L/P) - ln(1-c) =(uexi,P- uexi,L)/(kBT), where {uexi,k}k=L,P are the excess chemical potentials and where kB is the Boltzmann constant. Our ambition was to re- late calculations of {uexi,k}k=L,P at atomistic scale to measurable partition co- efficients obtained for bulky solutes with different stiffness and shape, such as hindered phenolic antioxidants, n-alkanes and n-alcohols. For large solutes in dense and cohesive phases (P or L), promising computation techniques involve free energy perturbation and non-equilibrium methods, thermodynamic integra- tion, extended ensembles (Gibbs or osmotic ensembles).