Organosulfur Polymer Composites by Free Radical Polymerization of Sulfur with Vegetable Oils

The dependence of conventional petroleum-based polymersPetroleum-based polymers on the oil industryOil industry continues to increase the environmentalEnvironmental burden and thus immense efforts are devoted to develop alternative biopolymersBiopolymer and polymersPolymer made from wasteWaste residues. Among green monomersMonomer used to produce biopolymersBiopolymer, vegetable oilsVegetable oil occupy a special position due to their cheap pricePrice, abundance, and their versatile molecular compositions, which are full of vinylic groupsVinylic groups acting as reaction sites, and therefore they have drawn a lot of attention in recent years. Inverse vulcanizationInverse vulcanization is a new technique to copolymerize elemental sulfur, a by-productByproduct in oil and gasGas refineries, with a vinylic monomerVinylic monomer(s) using free radical polymerizationFree radical polymerization at the molten state of sulfur to obtain stable sulfur-based polymersSulfur-based polymers having green nature and unique propertiesProperties. This new class of polymersPolymer has been found very promising for various applicationsApplication including environmental remediationEnvironmental remediation, energy storageEnergy storage in Li–S batteriesLi-S batteries, fertilizersFertilizers, optical devicesOptical devices, and healable polymeric materialsHealable polymeric materials besides varieties of unfolded applicationsApplication. This chapter briefly reviews the progress taking place in the applicationApplication of the inverse vulcanizationInverse vulcanization process for the preparation of organosulfur polymeric compositesOrganosulfur polymeric composites made using vegetable oilsVegetable oil as green monomersMonomer. As a matter of comparison, the propertiesProperties of the reported organosulfur polymeric compositesOrganosulfur polymeric composites made on the bases of a variety of vegetable oilsVegetable oil (linseedLinseed, olive, sunflowerSunflower, canola, and soybean, corn oil, and rubberRubber seed) are also discussed. Finally, the challenges and the future perspective of this type of environmentally friendly and low-costCost polymericPolymeric compositesComposite are outlined.