The work presented in this thesis represents the chemical modifications of unsaturated plant oils to yield oligomeric/polymeric polyols suitable for polyurethane synthesis. Chapter 1 provides the introduction to the chemistry of polyurethanes, plant oils and plant oil based polyols. Chapter 2 focus on making oligomeric polyols from unsaturated plant oils through epoxidation and subsequent epoxide ring opening oligomerization that yielded oligomeric polyols. The properties of these oligomeric polyols were influence by the level of unsaturation of the plant oils. In addition, catalyst loading, monomer concentration and reaction time play vital role in determining the properties of the oligomeric polyols. Plant oil based polyols were also prepared by epoxide ring opening with renewable polyhydric alcohols that provide a variety of plant oil based polyols for polyurethane synthesis. Chapter 3 focus on the synthesis of polyurethanes (PU) from various types of plant oil based polyols as well as the evaluation of the mechanical properties of these synthesized PU. The tensile test of the PU shows that the mechanical properties were related to the structure and functionalities of the plant oil based polyols. The bulk of Chapter 4 discusses the copolymerization of epoxidized plant oils with tetrahydrofuran and the use of these copolymers for the synthesis of PU. The properties of the copolymers were related to the epoxidized oils used in the reaction and therefore influence the mechanical properties of the PU synthesized from them. Finally, Chapter 5 is a collection of work on the one-pot oligomerization of unsaturated fatty acid and plant oils with and without catalyst as well as the synthesis of PU based on these polyols.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:582445 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Hoong, Seng Soi |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/57716/ |
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