Epoxy thermosets are typically employed for their excellent modulus, high glass transition temperature, low viscosity, wettability, and no condensation products during cure. Epoxy thermosets are becoming more prevalent in different applications from structural adhesives to wind turbine blade construction and they are almost impossible to degrade and ultimately are not sustainable. Herein we prepared liquid epoxy resins from dihydroferulate esters derived from ferulic acid and a series of aliphatic alkyl diols including ethylene glycol, 1,3-propane diol, 1,4-butane diol, and 1,6-hexane diol. Ferulic acid is a biobased platform chemical that can be derived from sugar beet roots, rice and wheat bran and bagasse, and aliphatic alkyl diols are becoming available from biomass at pilot plant level scale. Our goal was to explore the effect of diol length on epoxy resin performance with a cycloaliphatic diamine crosslinker. Decreasing the length of the diol linker increased both the glass transition temperature and the glassy modulus that eventually surpass stiffness of resins derived from bisphenol A. Additionally, the internal aliphatic ester can be used to selectively degrade the thermoset under static mild alkaline conditions with tunable degradation times ranging from under 5 hours to days. This family of biobased epoxy resins represents a new class of degradable epoxy resins that has the potential to reduce costs for continuous fiber reinforced composites by enabling recycling of fillers.

Degradable ferulic acid based epoxy thermosets

251st National Meeting (2016)

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