CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Introduction Polyurethanes offer an ample variety of properties that can be useful in diverse applications. As in the case of the majority of polymers, the polyols used for their production are derived from the fuel industry [1]. On the other hand, vegetable oils are attractive as an alternative source for bio-based polyols, contributing to the environmental care and sustainable development, with the additional advantages of wide availability at comparative low cost. Vegetable oils consist of triglyceride molecules with three unsaturated fatty acid chains that can be reacted in order to obtain a product for the polymer industry [2]. Specifically, the reaction of the double bonds of triglycerides in order to incorporate hydroxyls groups by means of different reaction paths has been studied [3-5]. In one of the most reported methods, the carbon-carbon unsaturations are reacted to incorporate hydroxyl groups through epoxidation with peracids followed by oxirane ring-opening with different alcohols like diethylen glycol [5]. The aim of this work is to obtain rapeseed oil based polyurethane rigid foams using glycerol as a reactive modifier in order to increase stiffness, and water as the reactive blowing agent. The effect of the addition of low concentrations of microcellulose to the foams was also evaluated.