No abstract

Recently, phthalates have been continuously banned in numerous fields by many countries. Therefore, the development of sustainable and efficient plasticizers has become particularly urgent. The waste cooking oil was used as the main raw materials in this study to synthesize an efficient plasticizer (acetylated-fatty acid methyl ester-trimellitic acid ester, AC-FAME-TAE). The structure of AC-FAME-TAE was characterized by FT-IR and 1 H NMR. The performance of the poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) plasticized by AC-FAME-TAE was tested and compared with those of the PVC plasticized with di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DOP) and EFAME (epoxy fatty acid methyl ester), respectively. DSC results indicated that AC-FAME-TAE had excellent plasticizing efficiency for PVC. The mechanical properties of PVC plasticized by AC-FAME-TAE were as comparable as PVC plasticized by DOP from the results of tensile test. In addition, the PVC plasticized by AC-FAME-TAE had excellent thermal stability and solvent resistance by the results of leaching test and TGA.

Methyl oleate, a kind of vegetable oil derivatives, was used as the raw material to synthesize novel polyols containing nitrogen and phosphorus (PNP) by three steps: amidaion, epoxidation, and ring-opening reaction. The structure of the ensuing PNP was characterized by gel permeation chromatography, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Then, polyurethane films were prepared by mixing the resulting polyols (PNP) and poly-(tetra methylene glycol) with isophorone diisocyanate in different proportions. After that, the thermostability of polyurethane films was investigated by limiting oxygen index (LOI), thermogravimetry, and cone calorimeter test. Similarly, mechanical property of polyurethane films was studied by tensile test. The results showed that as the amount of PNP increased, the tensile strength of polyurethane films increased from 2.0 to 13.5 MPa, the LOI values of polyurethane films went up from 20.1% to 25.5%. Moreover, the initial decomposition temperature of polyurethane films improved from 280 to 312 C and the total heat release drooped from 32.2 to 21.7 kW/m 2 without adding any other flame retardant. Therefore, it was observed that the polyurethane films have superior thermal stability and mechanical property and appear suitable for a wide range of applications.

A series of solid acid catalysts xHPW/Fe-Z (x represents mass percentage of HPW = 10, 20, 30, and 50%) was synthesized by immobilizing the 12-tungstophosphoric acid (HPW) over magnetic zirconia (Fe-Z) through coprecipitation and impregnation methods. These catalysts were applied as heterogeneous acid catalysts in the esterification of oleic acid with methanol as a model reaction for the preliminary stage of the biodiesel production. The synthesized catalysts were characterized by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), brunauer-emmet-teller equation (BET), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), scanning electron microscope, energydispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which proved that the catalyst showed excellent thermal and chemical stability and considerable magnetization (9 emu/g). The 30HPW/Fe-Z was identified as the most efficient catalyst because it afforded a high conversion rate of 98.1% and showed a lower loss of activity over successive reaction cycles among all of the samples, and this loss of activity had been analyzed on the basis of the fouling of the materials. Besides, the catalytic conversion of HPW immobilized on magnetic zirconia was even higher than that observed under homogenous conditions due to the positive contribution of the carrier.