Going greener: Synthesis of fully biobased unsaturated polyesters for styrene crosslinked resins with enhanced thermomechanical properties

Abstract

Abstract. The main goal of this work was the development of fully biobased unsaturated polyesters (UPs) that upon crosslinking with unsaturated monomers (UM) could lead to greener unsaturated polyester resins (UPRs) with similar thermomechanical properties to commercial fossil based UPR. After the successful synthesis of the biobased UPs, those were crosslinked with styrene (Sty), the most commonly used monomer, and the influence of the chemical structure of the UPs on the thermomechanical characteristics of UPRs were evaluated. The properties were compared with those of a commercial resin (Resipur 9837 ® ). The BioUPRs presented high gel contents and contact angles that are similar to the commercial resin. The thermomechanical properties were evaluated by dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA) and it was found that the UPR synthesized using propylene glycol (PG), succinic acid (SuAc) and itaconic acid (ItAc) presented very close thermomechanical properties compared to the commercial resin.

Effect of Ethylenediaminetetraacetic Acid on Unsaturated Poly(Butylene Adipate-Co-Butylene Itaconate) Copolyester with Low-Melting Point and Controllable Hardness

“…However, its suitability for commercial use is limited due to its poor mechanical characteristics. In contrast, unsaturated aliphatic polyester can be modified to form a network structure, by chemically cross-linking modifiers such as telechelic oligoesters and diisocyanates, diepoxides or triethoxysilanes units, to form thermoset-like copolyesters [16,17,18], or by combining it with epoxy materials [19,20]. This modification aims to obtain excellent physico-chemical properties that differ from the characteristic properties of polyesters, such as stronger hardness, higher rigidity, and better tensile strength and thermal stability [21].…”

Thermal Degradation Kinetics of ZnO/polyester Nanocomposites

“…Furthermore, the heat treatment produced an effective size reduction of the ZnO particles promoting an increase of the surface area. Hence, as the surface area/volume ratio increased with the decrease in the size of the nanoparticle, this might lead to the low stiffening effect [ 3 , 32 , 33 ].…”

A Novel Approach for the Preparation of Poly(Butylene Succinate) Microparticles

“…The obtained molar masses can be considered low for applications that require good mechanical properties, but seem adequate for manufacture of microparticles intended for cosmetic applications and are higher than molar masses reported in other studies and obtained at more severe reaction conditions. [48] For the sake of comparison, Chen et al [49] studied the synthesis of several biomass polymers; for the specific case of PBS, the reaction was performed with the catalyst TTP (titanium tetraisopropoxide) and led to PBS resins with Mn of 3000 Da after 20 h of reaction at 220 C. Costa et al [50] also synthesized a series of polycondensation polymers, using succinic acid, itaconic acid, and furanic acid as monomers, in the absence of catalyst at 205 C for 12 h, leading to PBS resins with Mn of 3500 Da. These works reported PBS molar masses obtained by GPC and using PMMA standards, as also performed in the present work.…”