[kolpaci34]

Hi everybody,

I am kind of in a weird situation....

I have a phenol formaldehyd plastic. This plastic is oxidized (it takes months to fully oxidize. When it oxidizes, its outer colour turns a bit darker than the original one. As you can see on the picture below, original colour is a cloudy white but when it oxidizes, its colur turns to dark red. I have several different colours of materials, all of them turn to a dark colour, some of them dark red and some of them to dark brown, or black. It depends on the original colour.

What i want to do is to make this oxidation faster. Anyone can tell me the main principle of this oxidation (what would be conditions, what makes the material oxidize, what conditions trigger it to oxidize etc). Any response will be appreciated.

Please see the oxidized material below. I grind a little part so you can see the original colour.

Regards.

[jaspevacek]

Oxygen (which you already have from the air), heat and maybe some UV light for extra fun. Also, if you can increase the surface area (grind it, for instance) that will also, but that may not be acceptable for your next step.

With regards to the UV light, all wavelengths of UV light are not equal, and I'm not going to go for the mindless route and suggest that you just go for the shortest wavelengths either. Photodegradation kinetics obey an activation spectra where certain wavelengths of light will induce the reaction faster than others. You can read more at my blog http://www.rheothing.com/2008/08/accelerated-aging-getting-bad-data-even.html