Synthesis, Characterization And Properties Of High Performance Bio-based Epoxy Resin And Curing Agent

The conversion of bio-mass to useful polymers or composites has considerable economical and environmental value in current time due to serious environmental pollution and diminishing petroleum oil. The world production of rosin is 1.1～1.5 million tons annually. The ring structure of rosin acid is similar in rigidity to petroleum based aromatic and cycloaliphatic compounds. It has great potential in synthesis of high performance materials. In our work, the following research work has been done:1,Maleopimarate was synthesized from rosin acid and maleic anhydride by D-A reaction. Its characterization was performed by IR, NMR and element analysis. Epoxy DER 662E was cured with maleopimarate (MPA) and trimellitic anhydride (TMA), respectively. The modulus, glass transition temperature and tensile strength as well as thermal stability of cured epoxy were evaluated by DMA, Instron Machine and TGA. The feasibility of bio-based maleopimarate as an alternative to petrochemical-based trimellitic anhydride using as an epoxy curing agent was studied. It shows that Epoxy DER 662E was cured by MPA and TMA have no difference in storage modulus (about 2500 MPa) but the former displayed higher glass transition temperature (Tg,127℃) than the epoxy cured with TMA(Tg,121℃). which might be caused by the large hydrogenated phenanthrene ring in MPA. The inflect intension of the two resulting products are about 105±1 MPa and 107±2 MPa separately.2,Synthesis and characterization of glycidyl ester with three functional group from rosin acid. Its structure was also confirmed by IR and NMR in detail. In order to investigate its properties, it was cured with bio-based curing agents, such as rosin based anhydride and tung oil based anhydride as well as their mixture. With different curing agent system, the properties of cured fully bio-based epoxy could be manipulated. Though the rosin-based epoxy cured by MPA had much advantage in the modulus, glass transition temperature and tensile strength than that TOA(the date is about 3200 MPa:2400 MPa,164℃:61℃,69±2 MPa:37±1 MPa separately). There also disadvantages in some properties like strike intensity (cured by MPA was only 1.84 kJ/m*m while the other was 3.4 kJ/m*m), So we need to improve it by blending the rigid curing agent with some flexible agent so as to enhance its. We can find the strike intensity of Epoxy cured by MPA get much better (about more than 75 percent) when blended with TOA.With the background of the drying up of petroleum day by day and people's growing attention on environment protection, we need to do some change. The purpose of our resent work is to find an alternative to petro-based chemical material so as to reduce the stress brought by the lack of petroleum.