Vegetable Oil Based Polyurethane Composites

In Over the past two decades, bio derived products have replaced petroleum-based polymeric materials at an exponential rate. The benefit of this replacement is decreased environmental degradation, fuel consumption, and fuel cost. One such greener route suggested for this, is the utilization of vegetable oils as feedstock to synthesize polymeric products, such as polyurethanes (PUs). Vegetable oils are cheap and abundant in quantity worldwide. Vegetable oils can be converted into diols, polyols, and isocyanates by implementing a variety of procedures. There is a wide variety of versatile polyurethane polymers based on these vegetable oil-based monomers. The thermal, mechanical, and physical, properties of these PU-based biocomposites is comparable and often better than those of conventional petrochemical polymeric composites. Moreover, a variety of biocomposites can be prepared by choosing a wise combination of vegetable oils, polymerization route and types of fibres/fillers as reinforcement material. These biocomposites find numerous applications in adhesives, several types of coatings, sensors, biomedical field, automotive, plasticizers and much more.