Composite materials based on bio-polyurethanes and vegetable reinforcements

NORMA E. MARCOVICH

Sorocaba

Workshop; III Workshop for Research and Technology in Materials Science; 2015

Polyurethanes (PU) are versatile polymers that have found ample variety of applications in quite different fields, including foams (flexible cushions as well as rigid heat insulators), construction, adhesives, gaskets and coatings, as well as medical devices. The facility of handling the formulation is the main reason for complying with such a wide range of properties, in particular mechanical properties. Moreover, the efforts to replace petroleum based polymers by other ones produced from renewable resources have also been applied to formulate bio-based polyurethanes, being the hydroxyl-containing component the one that is replaced partially or completely by bio-diols or bio-polyols. In this sense, our research group has worked actively in the modification of tung and castor oils to prepare polyols of different characteristics (with or without unsaturations in the polymeric chains, high/low molecular weight, high/low viscosity, etc.) that were later used to prepare both foamed and compact polyurethane based materials. Additionally, a polyol obtained by chemical recycling of scrapped polyurethane foam was also used to prepare lightweight polyurethane samples.