As the annual global production of plastics has dramatically increased, a considerable amount of non-degradable plastic waste has entered the ocean either by accident or through illegal dumping. While macroscale plastic waste (e.g., bottles, film, etc.) can be physically collected from the ocean, microplastic pollutants (i.e. less than 5 mm in diameter) are a bigger challenge; microplastics impact the marine ecosystem due to their propensity to be ingested and accumulated in the bodies of aquatic organisms causing damage to marine life. This also contaminates a major food source for humans. Therefore, substituting non-degradable petroleum-based materials with biodegradable analogs has emerged as an attractive strategy to potentially address these issues. Among various renewable sources, triglyceride vegetable oils are potential candidates, because they are perpetually renewable and products derived from biorenewable vegetable oils can be more readily degraded than petroleum-based analogs. In many past studies, vegetable oil derivatives have been blended with/incorporated into petroleum-based materials to prepare thermosetting polymers. However, most existing examples normally incorporate low total biorenewable content into the final product.<br/>In this work, two different soybean oil derivatives (e.g., one a multifunctional thiol and the other a multifunctional ene) were photocured to prepare cross-linked thermosets. Mercaptanized epoxidized soybean oil was synthesized by performing a reaction between a cysteine derivative and commercially available epoxidized soybean oil. Then, as-prepared mercaptanized soybean oil was mixed with the commercially available acrylated counterpart, diluent, and photoinitiator, followed by UV irradiation under ambient conditions to produce crosslinked films and fibers. Not only do the resulting materials possess high biorenewable content (&gt;91%), but they are also biodegradable making them attractive for a diverse range of green materials applications.

All soybean oil-based thermoset films and fibers with high biorenewable content

256th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.