Investigation of the degradation of plastic materials used for microwave heating

• Main Authors: Galang, Marichu S., Flores, Omar B.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1998
• Subjects: Plastics; Microwave heating
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/9649
• Institution: De La Salle University

In the advent of microwave technology, the use of microwave ovens and microwavable containers for fast heating and cooking has been widely adopted. Hence, there is an exponential increase in the number of plastic containers in the market to meet the demand, some of which are indiscriminately used for microwave cooking and heating. This study aimed to investigate possible degradation of plastic containers used for microwave cooking and heating in answer to the growing concern about the detrimental effects when these plastics are exposed to microwave radiation. Degradation of the samples was determined by observing structural changes of the plastics by FT-IR, after heating in the microwave for 210 minutes at the highest frequency. Degradation was found to occur only at the interior of the samples. No water-soluble degradation product was observed from UV-Visible spectrophotometric and gas chromatographic analyses. The degraded samples suggest the carbonyl group as the possible end-product, which could be formed from the oxidation of C-H molecule, satisfying the proposed mechanism for the thermal oxidation degradation.