Ion-attachment mass spectrometry with a temperature-programed direct probe allows the detection of intact pyrolysis products. It, therefore, offers the opportunity to monitor directly thermal byproducts on a real-time basis and potentially to detect thermally unstable products. With this technique, we investigated the thermal decomposition of polyacrylamide (PAA). Pyrolysis of PAA at around 450 °C produces many products (e.g., amides, imides, nitriles, ketones, aldehydes, and acrylamide oligomers). Acrylamide, which is a possible carcinogen, is produced abundantly in various industries, and, therefore, continues to be a cause for concern. We also investigated the kinetics of the thermal decomposition of PAA, and observed that the degradation of acrylamide obeys Arrhenius kinetics, which allowed us to correlate the rate constant with the absolute temperature and the activation energy. The activation energy of thermal decomposition was calculated from selected ion-monitoring curves of acrylamide.
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