Separation and identification of stabilizers used in the manufacture of polyethylene resins are necessary in order to correlate performance properties with polymer composition. This test method provides a means to determine the polymer additives listed in Table 1 in polyethylene samples. This test method is capable of the determination of other antioxidants, but the stability of these during extraction has not been investigated.

The additive extraction procedure is made effective by the relatively low solubility of the polymer sample in solvents generally used for liquid chromatographic analysis. In this method, isopropanol and cyclohexane were chosen because of their excellent extraction efficiencies as well as for safety reasons. Other solvents including ethylacetate, isobutanol, chloroform and methylene chloride can also be used.

Methods other than refluxing that have been used to remove additives from the polymer matrix including pressurized liquid, microwave, ultrasonic, and supercritical fluid extractions. For the separation of the extracted additives, SFC and GC have been used successfully for several of the additives.

Under optimum conditions, the lowest level of detection for an antioxidant is approximately 2 ppm.