Modifications of olive waste oils for biopolymers production

DOLLY L. GRANADOS; MELINA M. BAGNI; MARÍA M. REBOREDO

Buenos Aires

Simposio; The Fifth International Symposium on Environmental Biotechnology and Engineering; 2016

Polymers, in the form of plastics, are used in making articles of daily use. An overwhelming percentage of the polymers to make these commodities are synthesized from petroleum or natural gas sources. These synthetic polymers are, however, often not environmentally friendly because they typically do not undergo the process of biodegradation and, of course, are dependent on a limited petroleum resource. The urgent need of today is to develop polymers that are biodegradable so that they become environmentally friendly or to be produced from renewable resources. The escalating cost of petrochemicals and the high rate of depletion of this natural resource present a serious challenge to the innovative potential of chemists. That is why scientists are searching for new environmentally friendly raw materials that can be synthesized into polymers. These new materials are derived from natural agricultural sources (renewable resources).Vegetable oils are significant starting materials for the production of polymers by virtue of their double bonds; functional groups that can result in polymerization1. The double bonds of these oils can be epoxidized or converted into hydroxyl groups to increase their reactivity. For this reason it is proposed to use oily wastes and/or olive oil blends of low quality (sub-products) from the olive oil obtaining process with the aim of reducing environmental impact. As raw materials, olive pomace oil, lamp oil and clear oil lees were used.The three types of olive oils (products of the industry and not suitable for human consumption) were characterized and modified in order to carry out polymerization reactions. Such modifications consisted in the epoxidation of double bonds with a subsequent ring opening to add hydroxyl groups (hydrolysis) and a final transesterification.Physicochemical characteristics were determined on both, the untreated oil and the modified oil. According to standard AOCS (American Oil Chemists Society) specific gravity, loss by heating, viscosity, acid value, saponification index, iodine value and hydroxyl index were determined. Also Infrared Spectroscopy was determined. The obtained results show clear differences between treated and untreated oils, such as, increase in its viscosity and hydroxyl index and decrease in iodine value among others, indicating that the three oils analyzed can be considered suitable for the production of monomers.