CHEMICAL SCIENCE AND BIOMOLECULAR ENGINEERING

Elastomer plays a very important role in our daily life. However, most synthetic elastomers are petroleum-based. To meet the growing demand for sustainable development, it is imperative to explore renewable raw materials to synthesize bio-based elastomers as nextgeneration rubbers. Compared with other natural materials, plant oil has a relatively high reactivity to be used as a monomer for polymerization directly. Soybean oil (SO), one of the biggest plant oil, has been found wide application in many area such as plastic, soaps, paints, coatings. Recently, soybean oil was also used for monomer to synthesize biobased elastomers. Wang et.al. [1] constructed a soybean oil based processable elastomer from epoxidized soybean oil and biobased diamine via ring-opening polymerization, then the obtained elastomers were cross-linked by succinic anhydride. The tensile strength of the bioelastomer with PHR-11succinic anhydride was 8.5 MPa and the elongation at break was about 200% without nanofiller reinforcement. Soybean oil based polyol and carbonated soybean oil were prepared from epoxidized soybean oil. These monomers were used to synthesize soybean-oil-based polyurethane elastomers [2,3]. These new soybean-oilbased elastomers could extend the variety of bio-based elastomers, and some of them are promising materials for the replacement of the existed petroleum-based elastomers or provide new applications. Due to the functional double bonds in soybean oil molecules, soybean oil could be easily prepared into bio-based monomers such as epoxidized soybean oil, carbonated soybean oil, soybean oil polyols, maleated soybean-oil glycerides, and so forth. These soybean oil based derivative could provide multiply stratagems for synthesized soybean oil based elastomers.

1. Wang Z, Zhang X, Wang R, Kang H, Ma J, et al. Synthesis and characterization of novelsoybean-oil-based elastomers with favorable processability and tunable properties.Macromolecules.2012 Nov;45(22):9010-9019. 
2. Mizera K, Ryszkowska J. Polyurethane elastomers from polyols based on soybean oilwith a different molar ratio. Polymer Degradation and Stability. 2016 Oct;132:21-31.  
3. Lee A, Deng Y. Green polyurethane from lignin and soybean oil through nonisocyanate reactions. European Polymer Journal.2015 Feb;63:67-73.