Determination of Carbon Dioxide by the Enhancement of Luminol-Potassium Permanganate Chemiluminescence and Its Application for the Biodegradation Analysis of Cellulose Acetate-g-poly (p-dioxanone) Copolymer

Abstract

A novel static chemiluminescence method has been developed and applied to the determination of carbon dioxide released during the biodegradation of polymers under controlled composting. The proposed method is based on the enhancement effect of carbon dioxide on luminol-potassium permanganate chemiluminescence signal. Under the optimum experimental conditions, the analytical system performed satisfactorily in a wide linear detection concentration ranging from 1.00 × 10⁻⁵ to 1.20 × 10⁻³ mol · L⁻¹ of carbonate with a detection limit of 3.58 × 10⁻⁶ mol · L⁻¹ carbonate or 1.57 × 10⁻⁷ g · mL⁻¹ carbon dioxide (3σ). This analytical method has been successfully applied to determine the aerobic biodegradability of cellulose acetate-graft-poly (p-dioxanone) copolymer (CA-g-PPDO) granule and film samples under controlled composting environment with a manual set-up built in our laboratory. The carbon dioxide evolved from the biodegradation of samples was measured by this proposed chemiluminescence (CL) system. The testing results showed that the degradation rate and final biodegradation percentage of CA-g-PPDO after 60 days of incubation period were closely related to the content of poly (p-dioxanone), and the maximum biodegradation percentage of these polymers has reached 76.77%.

Keywords:

• Biodegradation
• Carbon dioxide
• Cellulose acetate-g-poly (p-dioxanone) copolymer
• Chemiluminescence
• Luminol

Acknowledgments

The financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 20974066) is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

Note: ^a D₆₀ was the biodegradation percentage of CA-g-PPDO samples for 60 days under controlled composting conditions.