Polymers with a finite lifetime are of great interest for oil and gas industry. Thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) combine the strength of thermoplastics with the flexibility of elastomers, a characteristic also potentially useful in oil and gas applications. We studied the hydrolytic degradation of a TPE of interest at elevated temperatures from both a mechanical and chemical perspective, and have demonstrated that the chemical degradation rates, the change in crystallinity and the storage modulus all follow the pseudo zero order kinetics with respect to varying time at three temperatures. Applying Arrhenius' empirical relationship to the determined rates gives rise to a temperature-dependent model that predicts the degradation behavior of the TPE outside of the experimental temperature range. Our results indicate that hydrolytic degradation leads to an increase of crystallinity (chemicrystallization) and a decrease of tensile strength and strain, and that the increase of crystallinity strongly correlates to the increase of the storage modulus. The polymer eventually deteriorates due to brittleness.

使用寿命有限的聚合物对石油和天然气行业非常感兴趣。热塑性弹性体（TPE）将热塑性塑料的强度与弹性体的柔韧性结合在一起，这一特性在石油和天然气应用中也可能有用。我们从机械和化学角度研究了目标TPE在高温下的水解降解，并证明了化学降解速率，结晶度变化和储能模量均随时间变化而遵循伪零级动力学。在三个温度下。将Arrhenius的经验关系应用于确定的速率将产生一个依赖温度的模型，该模型可预测TPE在实验温度范围之外的降解行为。我们的结果表明，水解降解会导致结晶度（化学结晶）的增加以及拉伸强度和应变的降低，并且结晶度的增加与储能模量的增加密切相关。聚合物最终由于脆性而劣化。