Synthetic mimicking of plant oils and comparison with naturally grown products in polyurethane synthesis.
The use of plant oils as industrial feedstocks can often be hampered by their lack of optimization towards a particular process, as well as their development being risky; growing suitable volumes of crops to test can take up to five years. To circumvent this, we aimed to discover a method that would mimic plant oil profiles in the laboratory, and show that they exhibited similar properties to the naturally grown plant oils in a given process. Using the synthesis of polyurethanes as an example, we have synthesized six different polymers and demonstrated that plant oils will produce polymers with similar physical properties to those oils mimicked in the laboratory. The use of this mimicking process can be extended to other types of polymers to obtain a method for predicting the properties of a given material based on the plant oil composition of a crop before it is grown in bulk.
Coles
Stuart R
SR
Warwick Manufacturing Group, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK. s.r.coles@warwick.ac.uk
Barker
Guy
G
Clark
Andrew J
AJ
Kirwan
Kerry
K
Jacobs
Daniel
D
Makenji
Kylash
K
Pink
David
D
D040761:Biomimetic Materials / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry; D002188:Cannabis / Q000737:chemistry; D005227:Fatty Acids / Q000032:analysis / Q000737:chemistry; D005229:Fatty Acids, Monounsaturated; D005990:Glycerol / Q000737:chemistry; D006900:Hydroxylation; D008422:Materials Testing; D015394:Molecular Structure; D010938:Plant Oils / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry*; D011140:Polyurethanes / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000737:chemistry; D000074262:Rapeseed Oil; D013718:Tensile Strength; D014280:Triglycerides / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry
D005227:Fatty Acids; D005229:Fatty Acids, Monounsaturated; D010938:Plant Oils; D011140:Polyurethanes; D000074262:Rapeseed Oil; D014280:Triglycerides; D005990:Glycerol