Synthesis of Polyurethane Solution (Castor oil based polyol for polyurethane)

Chemical Engineering (Computer Aided Process Design)

Around 160 million hector unused is available in India. India is the world’s largest producer of castor oil, producing over 75% of the total world’s supply. There are over a hundred companies in India-small and medium-that are into castor oil production, producing a variety of the basic grades o castor oil. All the above factors make it imperative that the India industry relooks at the castor oil sector in order to devise suitable strategies to derive the most benefits from such an attractive confluence of factors. Castor oil is unique owing to its exceptional diversity of application. The oil and its derivatives are used in over 100 different applications in diverse industries such as paints, lubricants, pharma, cosmetics, paper, rubber and more. Recent developments have successfully derived polyol from natural oils and synthesized range of PU product from them. However, making flexible solution from natural oil polyol is still proving challenging. The goal of this thesis is to understand the potentials and the limitations of natural oil as an alternative to petroleum polyol. An initial attempt to understand natural oil polyol showed that flexible solution could be synthesized from castor oil, which produced a rigid solution. Characterization results indicate that the glass transition temperature (Tg) was the predominant factor that determines the rigidity of the solution. The high Tg of solution was attributed to the low number of covalent bond between cross linkers.

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