Congratulations to our Ph.D. student Silvia Pizzimenti for her publication "Unravelling the effect of carbon black in the autoxidation mechanism of polyunsaturated oils" on Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry. In this work, the effect of amorphous carbon black on the mechanism and the kinetic of autoxidation of a polyunsaturated oil used as paint binder was investigated. Moreover, the effect of the addition of common paint additives, aluminium stearate and zinc stearate, was studied.
Amorphous carbon has an antioxidant effect and inhibits radical chain propagation as well oxidative degradation phenomena of model oil paintings. The presence of aluminium and zinc stearates in the black paint affects the autoxidation process, by leading, in the first months, to faster consumption of unsaturated moieties, and, accordingly, to accelerate and increase peroxides formation. After a few months though, the whole curing slows down, and active peroxides and radicals are still present even after one year of ageing.
The work is available at the following link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-021-11165-8
