Abstract
Chemically modified vegetable oils have become commercially attractive nowadays because they can be utilized as specialized components for the production of bioplasticizers and biopolymers due to their characteristics as being inexpensive, nontoxic, biodegradable, and renewable products. Due to the presence of unsaturation sites in the vegetable oils, they can be chemically modified and transformed into polymeric monomers such as acrylated epoxidized vegetable oils through well-known processes like epoxidation and acrylation processes. Acrylated epoxidized vegetable oil is a biopolymer that has a multitude of applications and is used mainly as a coating material for plastic, paper, and wood. There is an enormous demand for this biopolymer, and the market growth prospects are huge in some regions of the world. However, there are some challenges in the synthesis of acrylated epoxidized vegetable oils in achieving the performance of similar acrylated polymer derived from petroleum sources. In this paper, the chemical structure, properties, and chemical modifications of different types of vegetable oils were reviewed where the emphasis was given on epoxidation and its subsequent acrylation processes. This paper also highlights four types of epoxidation and their subsequent acrylation processes involving five different vegetable oils.
Highlights
Renewable resources are bound to gradually replace petroleum-based feedstock in many chemical industries
The epoxides can be further modified through acrylation, which is an epoxide ring-opening process, to produce acrylated epoxidized vegetable oils (VOs) (AEVOs) that have an extensive application in the fields of UV-curing coatings, biodegradable foam, and composite materials [4]
VOs are gaining a lot of attention in manufacturing industry due to its advantages of being environmental friendly, cheap, biodegradable, and renewable leading to abundant resources
Summary
Renewable resources are bound to gradually replace petroleum-based feedstock in many chemical industries. Vegetable oils (VOs) have drawn a great attention as a popular agricultural product in the industry as they are cheap, nontoxic, biodegradable, and most importantly renewable resources as compared to products from petroleum. Despite their long history of use and benefits, petroleum-based resources have negative environmental consequences due to their high resistance to chemical and biological degradation. Epoxidation is well known as one of the most popular processes with significant commercial interest because this process can chemically modify the unsaturation presents in the VOs into epoxides These epoxidized VOs (EVOs) can be used to make a variety of products such as bioplasticizers and biopolymers [3]. This paper does summarize the chemical structure, properties, and chemical modifications of VOs with significant attention to the main processes of producing AEVOs from different VO resources via epoxidation and subsequent acrylation and discusses the global usage of VOs and the market demand for AEVOs
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