Use of Fatty Acids to Develop Green Polymers and Composites

Abstract

Most polymers, at present, are petroleum-based and do not degrade over many decades under normal environmental conditions. As a result, efforts toward developing environmental-friendly and biodegradable “green” polymers for various commercial applications have gained significant momentum in recent years. The current interest in the development of useful biodegradable polymeric materials has encouraged scientists and industrialists to use readily available renewable, inexpensive raw materials such as carbohydrates, lignin, starch, gums, chitosan, vegetable oils, and fatty acids. Vegetable oils, which are triglycerides of fatty acids, specially, the nonedible grade, are being investigated by the researchers extensively as a suitable alternative to petroleum oil. Fatty acids, when converted into polymers, give new materials with useful properties such as flexibility, hydrophobicity, and pliability. At the same time, degradation into naturally occurring compounds makes them highly environmental-friendly. Besides their renewable, environmental-friendly, and inexpensive nature, they are useful for various applications like wound dressing materials, drug delivery and implantable devices, in surface-coating industries, as high-damping structural material, etc. Fatty acid monomers are integrated into the polymeric chains by using various techniques. Most fatty acids are monofunctional in nature and act only as chain terminator during polymerization. This limitation has been overcome by dimerization of unsaturated fatty acids or by creating a functional group on the monomers. In future, such green materials may offer many new exciting applications. Development in the genetic sciences will have a great impact on the materials science area of fatty acid–based materials. Better characterization and fundamental studies on fatty acid–based polymers and composites will create new applications which could lead to replacement of many available synthetic polymers and other materials. They also comply with the emerging concept of sustainable development. In this chapter, the recent trends in converting fatty acids into green polymers and green composite materials have been summarized, while also providing insights to future trends.