Vegetable Oil Based Polymer Composites—Processing Properties and Applications

This chapter provides an overview of the processing, properties and applications of various vegetable oil based polymers suitable for composites manufacturing. Among the different sources of biomass feed stock, vegetable oils play a key role in the development of bio based polymers and sustainability issues. Functionalization of vegetable oil triglycerides via epoxidation, acrylation, maleinization, hydroxylation and subsequent conversion of polymers offers a variety of polymeric materials. Blending of epoxidized vegetable oil with petro based epoxy resins DGEBA and subsequent polymerization in the presence of bismaleimides offers a variety of bio based polymers suitable for high performance applications. Three different types of bismaleimides were used to prepare hybrid polymeric materials of high thermal stability and mechanical strength. SEM micrograms of the hybrid materials show interesting heterogeneous morphological characteristics. Flame retardation properties of the different bismaleimide modified vegetable oil based epoxy matrices were discussed.