Thermal destruction of the PVC cable insulation

In recent years, the problem of recycling and reuse of scrap and wastes of the cable industry has become increasingly urgent. Traditionally, these wastes are treated by high-temperature firing of used electric cables followed by the extraction of the metal core from the processed products. In this connection, it is of interest to study the process of thermal destruction of the cable insulation because it leads to the formation of a volatile fraction containing chlorine compounds, other toxic gases and dust, which worsens the state of the environment and threatens human health. In the present work, we study the general regularities of the kinetics of thermal destruction of the PVC cable insulation both in the initial state and after treatment in liquids (in water and in a solution of acetic acid). We performed systematic investigations of the process of thermal destruction of the samples of PVC insulation within the temperature range 25–600 °C. As the object of investigations, we used samples of PVC cable insulation commercially produced by the Russian cable industry. It was shown that the complete and intense release of the volatile fraction occurs within the indicated temperature range. It was also experimentally established that the kinetic dependence of this process and its constant is quite complicated and described by a kinetic equation of fractional order. As a result of processing of the experimental data, we establish the rates of thermal destruction of the analyzed samples of PVC insulation and the corresponding activation energies of the process. It is also shown that the procedure of holding of PVC insulation samples in acetic acid and in cold water decreases the values of activation energy by more than a factor of 1.13–2.17 as compared with the original PVC insulation samples. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.