Polyethylene degrades slowly when discarded in the environment and exposed to natural weathering. A solution to this problem is the incorporation of additives to accelerate its biodegradation. In the present study, a biodegradable low-density polyethylene (LDPE) blend was obtained by the mixture of LDPE with a biodegrading additive (8% w/w) and the effect of accelerated weathering on biodegradation process was assessed. Chemical, mechanical, thermal, and morphological properties of non-aged and aged samples were studied. Results showed that aging process caused changes on structural characteristics (insertion of functional groups), morphological (appearance of micro-cracks and increased roughness), mechanical (greater stiffness and loss of plasticity) and thermal (lower degree of crystallinity and thermal stability) properties. The presence of biodegrading additive contributed to aging process, since polar functional groups were inserted into additive exposed to soil underwent greater degradation than their non-aged counterparts. CO₂ production of aged LDPE blend demonstrated that accelerated weathering influences biodegradation process. In this work, due to availability of O₂ gas, aerobic microorganisms can be the main responsible by the material deterioration, leading to production of microbial biomass, CO₂ and H₂O. Thus, the results of biodegradation (166 days) obtained in this work are promising, once it was reached a natural soil from South Brazil landfill.

聚乙烯丢弃在环境中并暴露在自然风化下会缓慢降解。该问题的解决方案是掺入添加剂以加速其生物降解。在本研究中，通过将LDPE与生物降解添加剂（8％w / w）混合，获得了可生物降解的低密度聚乙烯（LDPE）共混物，并评估了加速老化对生物降解过程的影响。研究了未老化和老化样品的化学，机械，热和形态学特性。结果表明，时效过程会引起结构特征（官能团的插入），形态（微裂纹的出现和粗糙度的增加），机械（较大的刚度和可塑性的损失）和热（较低的结晶度和热稳定性）性能的变化。 。生物降解添加剂的存在有助于老化过程，因为极性官能团被插入暴露在土壤中的添加剂比未老化的添加剂遭受更大的降解。一氧化碳₂老化LDPE共混物的生产表明加速的风化影响生物降解过程。在这项工作中，由于与O的可用性₂气体，好氧微生物可以是由材料劣化的主要负责，导致生产微生物生物质的，CO ₂和H ₂ O.因此，生物降解的结果（166天）中获得的一旦从巴西南部垃圾填埋场获得了天然土壤，这项工作就很有希望。