Resins, Foams and Shape Memory Copolymers from Vegetable Oils and Oleochemicals

F.I. ALTUNA; C. MEIORIN; D. MARIN QUINTERO; J.P. ESPINOSA; M. A. MOSIEWICKI; R. A. RUSECKAITE; M.I. ARANGUREN; P.M. STEFANI

Barcelona

Congreso; Third International Symposium Frontiers in Polymer Science; 2013

Elsevier

The aim of this work is to present our current work on vegetable oil-based resins, foams and shape memory copolymers. Thermal, mechanical and optical properties of epoxy resins synthesized by the partial replacement of the synthetic diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) with increasing amounts of epoxidized soybean oil (ESO) using a cycloaliphatic anhydride as a cross-linking agent and 1-methyl-imidazole as an initiator were investigated. The combination of DGEBA with 40% ESO resulted in a resin with a significant improvement in the impact strength (38% higher than the neat DGEBA) accompained by a small reduction of the glass transition temperature, Tg (from 120ºC to 109ºC), a reduction of about 11ºC in Tg value abd without a loss in transparency and with the aditional benefit of being more environmentally sound than neat synthetic epoxy resins. Current work is undertaken un order to synthesize triacilglycerides containing sterically accesible terminal epoxy functionalities which are far more reactive than the "internal" epoxy groups in ESO.