Recording Differential Thermogravimetric Balances

Abstract

IN recent years, interest has been revived in the application of the thermogravimetric technique for the characterization of inorganic and organic compounds, and for studies concerning their thermal decomposition process. Several types of automatic balances have been developed—some of them now being commercially available—to give recorded curves of the cumulative weight-loss, with time or temperature, of a sample decomposing thermally under controlled conditions. It is often necessary to prepare, from this record, a curve of the rate of weight-loss as a function of time or temperature, by the somewhat tedious and relatively inaccurate process of graphical differentiation.