Plant oil renewable resources as green alternatives in polymer science

Abstract

The utilization of plant oil renewable resources as raw materials for monomers and polymers is discussed and reviewed. In an age of increasing oil prices, global warming and other environmental problems (e.g. waste) the change from fossil feedstock to renewable resources can considerably contribute to a sustainable development in the future. Especially plant derived fats and oils bear a large potential for the substitution of currently used petrochemicals, since monomers, fine chemicals and polymers can be derived from these resources in a straightforward fashion. The synthesis of monomers as well as polymers from plant fats and oils has already found some industrial application and recent developments in this field offer promising new opportunities, as is shown within this contribution. (138 references.)

Linear Semicrystalline Polyesters from Fatty Acids by Complete Feedstock Molecule Utilization

“…Entirely chemical synthetic routes in which the original molecular structure of the utilized plant biomass is substantially retained are an interesting alternative to such biotechnological routes, as they can be efficient in terms of feedstock utilization and reaction space-time yields, and also provide novel properties. Plant oils [5][6][7] are in principle attractive substrates for semicrystalline long-chain polyesters, as the substrate already provides relatively long (CH 2 ) n crystallizable segments. This is illustrated by preparation of the difunctional monomer sebacic acid from ricinoleic acid, [8] which is converted into aliphatic polyamides such as nylon-6,10 with a beneficially low water uptake.…”

Fatty Acid Derived Monomers and Related Polymers Via Thiol‐ene (Click) Additions

“…[1] Especially castor oil is a very versatile renewable feedstock for all kinds of polymeric materials, including, e.g., polyesters, polyamides, polyurethanes, and many others. [2] One of the commercially available castor oil derived platform chemicals, 10-undecenoid acid 1, [2,3] was recently used to prepare polyamides X,20, [4] a variety of acyclic diene metathesis derived polyesters, [5][6][7] as well as different cross-linked materials, [8][9][10] thus demonstrating its broad range of application possibilities.…”

Green waxes, adhesives and lubricants

“…Estolides result from ester bond formation between a hydroxyl or olefinic group of one fatty acid and the terminal carboxyl group of a second fatty acid. These and other estolides are biodegradable and frequently considered to be applicable as lubricants (Bírová et al 2002;Meier et al 2007). Other examples are hydrogenation (King et al 2001), esterification (Erhan et al 2006a;Doll et al 2007), epoxidation (Hwang & Erhan 2001;Bírová et al 2002;Hwang et al 2003), metathesis (Verkuijlen et al 1977;Erhan et al 1997;Holser et al 2006), acylation (Schmidt et al 2006) and transesterification (Bírová et al 2002;Yunus et al 2004) that have all been used in order to synthesize an improved product.…”