The refinement of renewable resources: New important derivatives of fatty acids and glycerol

Abstract

During the last years, the industrial significance of renewable resources has highly increased. The ever‐growing use of fossil resources for energy consumption, polymers, fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals and the therefore steadily increasing price favour the substitution of oil and gas by renewable resources. Here, especially products of catalytic functionalisations of vegetable fats and oils such as rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, palm oil or coconut oil play a decisive role. The present article gives a survey of several important catalytic functionalisations of fatty compounds and glycerol resulting in new attractive products. With their emerging properties, they could find a rapid introduction into the chemical market. Particularly the functionalisations via heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis, like additions, reductions, oxidations and metathesis reactions, will be presented.

Polymer precursors from catalytic reactions of natural oils

“…14 Value enhancement of triglycerides leads to the preparation of industrial products and mainly to surfactants, lubricants and polymers. [15][16][17][18] For instance, the production of surfactants being efficient and presenting interesting properties such as biocompatibility and biodegradability 19,20 is a successful example of industrial conversion of vegetable oils into valuable chemicals. [21][22][23] The area of industrial conversion of oils into chemicals being wide, the reader's attention will now be focused only in the field of polymers.…”

Fette und Öle als nachwachsende Rohstoffe in der Chemie

“…[87,88] Sehr interessant ist die Synthese w-funktionalisierter Fettsäuren, bei der gut verfügbare Fettstoffe mit innenständigen C-C-Doppelbindungen als Substrate verwendet werden. Die Reaktionen verlaufen über die Isomerisierung der Doppelbindung entlang der Fettsäurekette und ihr Abfangen ausschließlich in der w-Position.…”

Moringa fatty acid methyl esters as a source of platform chemicals developed via meathesis route

“…Numbers of pure fatty acids are today available which make them attractive for the synthesis and as raw materials for the chemical industry [3]. The intermediates required for generating a variety of oleochemicals are today fossil-based and these can be generated by conducting a number of organic reactions across the double bonds of vegetable oil fatty acids like oxidations, reductions, polymerizations [5][6] to prepare a wide range of organic intermediates. In this context, olefin metathesis is one of the important and reliable methods for the development of raw materials with strong environmental impact, eco-design with predictive methods into new processes.…”