Abstract
More and more industries demand environmental friendliness. Silkworm pupae oil (SPO), extracted from the desilked silkworm pupae, can serve as a promising substrate alternative to use in plasticization. This study aimed to prepare epoxidized silkworm pupae oil (ESPO) and investigate their effects on the thermal stability and plasticization of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) films. A chemo-enzymatic method of ESPO was developed in the presence of Lipase SMG1-F278N and H2O2 in natural deep eutectic solvents (DESs). Lipase SMG1-F278N could initiate the epoxidation reaction effectively at room temperature with a negligible loss of activities 10 batches. A maximum oxirane value of 6.94% was obtained. The formation of oxirane ring in ESPO was confirmed by FTIR and 13C NMR spectra. Moreover, ESPO showed a better thermal stability and lower freezing point than epoxidized soybean oil (ESO). It was demonstrated that ESPO had a good frost resistance. In addition, ESPO showed a significantly improved plasticizing effect on flexible polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Compared with ESO, ESPO could increase the tensile elongation at break effectively. A significantly lower migration rate of plasticizer was observed in PVC plasticized with ESPO.
Highlights
In recent decades, epoxidation has been receiving increasing attentions in oil industries as the epoxidized fats and oils could be endowed with desirable toughness used in plasticizers [1]
The results demonstrated that polyvinyl chloride (PVC) (80 phr) plasticized with epoxidized silkworm pupae oils (ESPO) and epoxidized linseed oil (ELO) showed close thermal stability times of 30 min and 29 min, respectively, which were higher than 26 min of epoxidized soybean oil (ESO)
The preliminary results showed that a high catalytic efficiency for production of ESPO was observed due to the enhanced robustness of Lipase SMG1-F278N in deep eutectic solvents (DESs)
Summary
Epoxidation has been receiving increasing attentions in oil industries as the epoxidized fats and oils could be endowed with desirable toughness used in plasticizers [1]. It has been documented that the epoxidized soybean oil (ESO, 4.6 double bonds per triglyceride chain) enabled the significantly enhanced toughness of petro-based epoxies. These epoxidized oils serve as promising eco-friendly reactive diluents [2]. The production of ESO has been successfully industrialized, thereby facilitating the synthesis of valuable plasticizers and polymer stabilizers [6]. The epoxidized fats and oils with high levels of linolenic acid exhibited better frost resistance used as plasticizers [9, 10]
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