The design of bio-based polymers from renewable resources is a promising step to provide materials with variety of industrial applications and less hazardous waste. The synthesis of bio-based monomers and polymers from plant oils can substitute usage of petrochemical materials as well as promote using vegetable oils as a cheap, widely available and natural renewable feedstock. Plant oil-based monomers (POM’s) were synthesized using one step transesterification reaction of crude plant oil (olive, sunflower, soybean and linseed oil). New acrylic monomers are capable to free radical copolymerization with petroleum-based counterparts (St, VAc and BA) as well as to homopolymerization. In terms of polymerizability, plant oils monomers behave as conventional vinyl monomers. The feasibility of plant oil-based monomers undergoing chain addition polymerization was confirmed by studying polymerization kinetics. Degree of unsaturation in plant oil triglyceride was used as a criterion to compare the homopolymerization kinetics of POM’s. Polymerization rate and the number-average molecular weight of homopolymers synthesized at 75 oC decreases with an increasing degree of unsaturation of the plant oil-based monomers. Chain propagation proceeds towards noticeable chain transfer reaction to plant oil-based monomers by the abstraction of allylic hydrogen in fatty acids fragments. The obtained values of CM (ratio of chain transfer and propagation rate constants) clearly depend on monomer structure as follows: CM(LSM)&gt; CM(SBM)&gt; CM(SFM)&gt; CM(OVM). Glass transition temperature measurements for selected plant oil-based homopolymers[Tg =4.2 °C for poly(SFM), Tg = -6.0 °C for poly(SBM)] indicate that varying bio-based content in copolymers synthesized from new plant oil-based monomers and their vinyl counterparts might considerably change the intermolecular interactions of macromolecules and physico-chemical properties, determined in particular by varying macromolecular flexibility.

Plant oil-based acrylic monomers for free radical polymerization

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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