Scientists at NDSU have developed an efficient and cost-effective one-step method to convert plant oils into acrylic monomers that can be used to produce latexes, latex adhesives, surfactants, emulsifiers, rheology modifiers, sizing agents, resins, binders, and other products that utilize acrylic polymers. Incorporating relatively small amounts of these monomers into polymeric materials enables specific and targeted shifts in thermomechanical and physical properties such as polymer material flexibility (elasticity), hydrophobicity, surface activity, film-forming temperature, viscosity etc., to optimize a product's performance without radically changing its behavior. The NDSU monomers contain two types of double bonds that aren't present in petroleum-based monomers. The double bond within the acrylic group is reactive in conventional addition free radical polymerization, which allows formation of linear polymers. The double bonds within the fatty chain remain unaffected during free radical polymerization, so remain available for additional post-polymerization tuning of the polymer performance characteristics through autoxidative cross-linking. This is in contrast to existing plant oil-based monomers, which produce branched and cross-linked polymers (due to fatty chain double bonds reactivity during the polymerization reaction). This method can use essentially any plant oil, animal fat, or other fatty esters as the raw material. Monomers derived from olive, high oleic soybean, canola, sunflower, soybean, corn, linseed, and other plant oils have been made and tested.
The performance attributes of the linear structure derived from the NDSU monomers provide significant benefits as compared with competing plant oil-based polymers.
Triglycerides derived from plant oils and fats are difficult to convert into low molecular weight acrylic monomers. Current production of fatty acrylates utilizes a multistep synthesis. For example, the production of a well-known fatty monomer, stearyl acrylate, includes saponification, neutralization, reduction, acylation, and other procedures, which are quite expensive. NDSU's one-step method can be performed using a batch set-up designed for biodiesel production, providing a simple and well-understood path to substitute bio-based monomers for petroleum-based monomers in the production of existing and new acrylic polymers.
This technology is patented in the U.S. and other countries and is available for licensing and partnering opportunities.
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