Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 10.1
Upper:
Change in percent original tensile extensibility of
polypropylene laminate exposed in air and floating in seawater at a beach
location Biscayne Bay, FL.
Lower:
A floating rig used to expose plastics to
surface water environment (in Miami Beach, FL).
Reproduced with permission from Andrady and Pegram (1989b).
Generally, the tensile extensibility of plastics decreases exponentially with
the time of exposure allowing the process to be modeled as follows.
where
t
is the duration of exposure.
ethylene-carbon monoxide (1%) copolymer (ECO), and photodegradable