Vegetable Oils in Production of Polymers and Plastics

Abstract

Plastics are ubiquitous in our modern environment. In fact, plastic as a class of material is manufactured in greater abundance than both steel and paper. As the world arrives closer to the global realization of our dwindling fossil resources, however, the fact that plastics are produced mainly from petroleum derivatives has become a source of concern and efforts to utilize renewable feedstock sources. This communication provides a short introduction to the use of renewable feedstock for the production of polymers, and focuses on the use of triacylglycerol oils as feedstock for the production of polyurethanes and chemicals used as additives in other plastics.

The battle for the “green” polymer. Different approaches for biopolymer synthesis: bioadvantaged vs. bioreplacement

“…It is estimated that 830 million tons of cellulose are produced every year as a product of photosynthesis. 91,94 Cellulose has been used to make cellophane and more recently modal, a bio-based textile. Its hydroxyl groups can be chemically modified to allow polymerization and produce derivatives with useful properties (i.e., carboxymethylcellulose, methylcellulose, hydroxyethylcellulose, hydroxypropylcellulose, cellulose acetate, cellulose acetate propionate, or cellulose xanthate).…”

The unique activity of catalyst in the epoxidation of soybean oil and following reaction of epoxidized product with bisphenol A

“…In an answer for growing awareness of an environmental issues, nowadays, green chemistry research concentrates on application of different natural and renewable raw materials (from which vegetable oils are the most popular) in various branches of synthesis and modification of already well known industrial materials, including polymeric materials (Biermann et al, 2000;Hatti-Kaul et al, 2007;Narine and Kong, 2005;Raqueza et al, 2010;Sharma and Kundu, 2006). Bio-based polymers, due to their properties, which are comparable to/or better than widely used petroleumbased polymers, already have numerous applications, such as e.g., stabilizers and plastizers of thermoplasts, mostly PVC and its copolymers (Li et al, 2014;Yin et al, 2014), lubricants (Campanella et al, 2010;Lawal et al, 2013) or polymer precursors.…”

Measurement, correlation and prediction of isothermal vapor–liquid equilibria of different systems containing vegetable oils

“…Lipids have a variety of applications in the food, chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. For this reason, some vegetable oils and animal fats have become important commodities in the international market [2].…”