Biobased Epoxidized Vegetable Oils and Its Greener Epoxy Blends: A Review

Abstract

Epoxidized vegetable oils (EVO) have drawn much attention in recent years, especially in the polymer industry as they are economical, available, environmentally friendly, non-noxious and renewable. Vegetable oils can be transformed into useful polymerizable oxygenated monomers commonly by Prileshajev-epoxidation, catalytic epoxidation using acidic ion exchange resin, chemo-enzymatic epoxidation, or metal-catalyzed epoxidation. Among those epoxidation methods, chemo-enzymatic epoxidation has achieved considerable interest nowadays since this method is safe, environmentally friendly and conversion rate of epoxidation usually exceeds 90%. Bio-based epoxidized vegetable oils from renewable natural resources are potential green materials to partially substitute and toughen petrochemical-based polymers.