Varieties of vegetable oil-based polymer composites

A large number of vegetable oil-based polymer composites have been reported in the literature. Among these, polyester, polyurethane and epoxies are very important and are discussed in the following sub-sections. 

The effect of the amount of natural fibre such as corn stover, the fibre length and the amount of cross-linker such as divinylbenzene with rm-butyl peroxide on the structure and thermomechanical properties of the soybean and linseed oil-based green composites, revealed that the properties were improved with an increase in the amount of fibre and a decrease in the length of the fibre. Mechanical properties like Young s modulus and the tensile strengths of the composites increased from 291-1398 MPa and 2.1-1 A MPa, respectively for 20-80 wt% fibre loading. However, water uptake also increases under these conditions. The composites contain 

Castor oil-based polyurethane resin is used to obtain graphite composite as an electrode material. The 60% graphite (w/w) composite exhibits good mechanical and appropriate electric resistance and offers ease of preparation and surface renovation. The polyurethanes of soybean oil-based polyol with glass reinforced composites exhibit mechanical properties comparable with those based on petrochemical polyol. The oxidative, thermal and hydrolytic stability of soybean oil-based composites are superior to those of petrochemical polyol. All the results indicated that a polyurethane matrix based on soybean oil is a preferable alternative to petrochemical polyurethanes in glass reinforced composites. 

A natural polyol of alcoholysed castor oil with triethanolamine-based rigid polyurethane foam and wood flour composite was prepared and found to show a decrease in compression modulus and yield strength with an increase in wood flour content, although good interaction of wood flour with isotyanate was noticed. Tung oil polyol-based polyurethane with pine wood flour composite was also reported.  

A study of glass fibre reinforced soybean oil-based polyurethane indicates that the mechanical properties such as tensile strength (259 c 270 MPa), flexural strength (418 cf. 444 MPa), tensile modulus (17 ct 18.6 GPa) and flexural modulus (18 cf. 27 GPa) of the soybean-based composites, were comparable with those of composites based on petrochemical (Jeffol) polyurethane. Since this soybean oil-based polyurethane composite offers better thermal, oxidative and hydrolytic stability than those based on petrochemicals, vegetable oil-based polyurethane composites could offer a viable alternative to petrochemical-based composites. 

---