E-nose for the monitoring of plastics catalytic degradation through the released Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) detection

[Display omitted] •Artificial olfaction E-nose system was employed to assess oxidative plastics destruction..•The prooxidant additive type, UV-irradiation and heating conditions were tested.•For all factors, polymers are destroyed, and highly volatile compounds are emitted.•The content and chemical nature of emitted VOCs depend on added prooxidant.•The highest degradation gives ferric stearate, while polymer doped with ferric carboxylate releases the most toxic VOCs. The work presents the results of an artificial olfaction E-nose system application for detection of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) – destruction products of OXO-biodegradable polyethylene films when exposed to Ultraviolet (UV) irradiation and heating. The E-nose system was based on eight piezoelectric quartz resonator sensors coated with polymeric sensing materials with various selectivity to analytes. The effect of prooxidants, materials based on variable valence metals, such as D2w, ferric stearate and ferric carboxylate, addition on polyethylene films (PE) photo destruction was studied. The dependence of the composition of VOCs mixtures emitted by PE films on the processing time, the power of the UV irradiation and on the nature of the modifying additive was established. In addition, the main emitted volatile compounds were identified and the dynamics of their formation for different catalysts during the plastics destruction were studied. The proposed E-nose system has proved to be an effective tool for assessing catalyst-prooxidants properties.