Abstract
Abstract In this article, five kinds of soybean oil-based polyols (polyol-E, polyol-P, polyol-I, polyol-B, and polyol-M) were prepared by ring-opening the epoxy groups in epoxidized soybean oil (ESO) with ethyl alcohol, 1-pentanol, isoamyl alcohol, p-tert-butylphenol, and 4-methoxyphenol in the presence of tetrafluoroboric acid as the catalyst. The SOPs were characterized by FTIR, 1H NMR, GPC, viscosity, and hydroxyl numbers. Compared with ESO, the retention time of SOPs is shortened, indicating that the molecular weight of SOPs is increased. The structure of different monomers can significantly affect the hydroxyl numbers of SOPs. Due to the large steric hindrance of isoamyl alcohol, p-hydroxyanisole, and p-tert-butylphenol, SOPs prepared by these three monomers often undergo further dehydration to ether reactions, which consumes the hydroxyl of polyols, thus forming dimers and multimers; therefore, the hydroxyl numbers are much lower than polyol-E and polyol-P. The viscosity of polyol-E and polyol-P is much lower than that of polyol-I, polyol-B, and polyol-M. A longer distance between the molecules and the smaller intermolecular force makes the SOPs dehydrate to ether again. This generates dimer or polymers and makes the viscosity of these SOPs larger, and the molecular weight greatly increases.
Highlights
Rigid polyurethane foam (PUF) has good thermal insulation performance, electrical insulation performance, highRenewable biological resources are of interest in polymer material design due to environmental pollution from petroleum
Obvious hydroxyl absorption peaks appeared at 3,420 cm−1 in the infrared spectra of fatty alcohol-modified soybean oil, which is due to the ringopening reaction of fatty alcohol with epoxy groups of epoxidized soybean oil (ESO) and the formation of hydroxyl groups
A series of soybean oil-based polyols (SOPs) with different fatty alcohol and aromatic alcohols were synthesized via a one-step method
Summary
Rigid polyurethane foam (PUF) has good thermal insulation performance, electrical insulation performance, highRenewable biological resources are of interest in polymer material design due to environmental pollution from petroleum. Vegetable oils contain double bonds in fatty acid chains and can be a renewable source of polyols to prepare PUF [5] such as rapeseed oil [6], castor oil [7], soybean oil [8], palm oil [9,10], and tung oil [11]. Soybean oil is a common vegetable oil bioresource that has been used as a substitute for biopolyols because of its renewable nature, low cost, and abundant supply [12]. Ji et al [14] prepared polyols via methyl alcohol, phenol, and cyclohexanol to ring-open ESO. They researched the effect of their content on PUF performance. Chen et al [3] successfully prepared PUF by a solvent-free method to investigate the influence of the polyols’ OH numbers on the thermal and mechanical properties of the polyurethanes
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