Effect of catalyst type on molecular weight increase and coloration of poly(ethylene furanoate) biobased polyester during melt polycondensation

Abstract

The effect of several catalysts on the synthesis of poly(ethylene furanoate) (PEF) was studied during a two-stage melt polycondensation process.

Synthesis and Characterization of In-Situ-Prepared Nanocomposites Based on Poly(Propylene 2,5-Furan Dicarboxylate) and Aluminosilicate Clays

“…Furthermore, the behavior of both PPF/HNT and PPF/MMT is very close to the correspondence of PPF neat up to ~400 °C, in which the corresponding nanoclays act nearly as inert fillers, since marginal variations in terms of thermal stability are observed. The process of dehydroxylation, as well as moisture entrapped in those two nanoclays—as evidenced by the dotted TGA curves in Figure 9—may prevent them from decelerating the thermal degradation of PPF [3,4].…”

“…The FDCA-based polyester with the greatest interest is poly(ethylene 2,5-furan dicarboxylate) (PEF), since it is believed it will replace poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) in packaging applications as its biobased homologue. In that direction, the effect of several catalysts [4], as well as of solid state polymerization on the molecular weight increase of PEF, was recently studied [5,6,7].…”

Bottle-grade polyethylene furanoate from ring-opening polymerisation of cyclic oligomers

“…Since the reacting polymer mixture is typically very viscous or even solid, the significantly reduced diffusion of such by-products leads to reaction times of the order of days. The resulting long exposure to the high processing temperatures (around 200 °C) not only increases the production costs, but even more importantly leads to thermal degradation and discolouration of the polymer, which make it unsuitable for the market 8 – 13 . While for PET the establishment of polycondensation-based processes was more feasible, PEF appears less stable to thermal impact which makes the production of a marketable polymer through such intensive process very challenging 9 , 10 , 14 .…”

Indole as a new sustainable aromatic unit for high quality biopolyesters

“…12,13 Recently, polyesters with furan units ( potentially from sustainable resources) have been developed rapidly. [14][15][16][17][18][19] Because of the similar chemical structures of furan and benzene, the thermal and mechanical properties of polyethylene furanoate (PEF) are similar to those of PET. [20][21][22][23][24] Furthermore, furan is unsymmetrical along its rotation axis and it has higher polarity; so, its ring-flipping process is restricted (compared with benzene in PET).…”