The plant oil-based polymer technology developed by the research group possesses some major attributes that will lead to new application opportunities for renewable materials. First, the number of functional groups, such as double bonds, hydroxyl groups, and epoxide groups, per molecule is very high, which has been shown to dramatically reduce cure rates and increase properties such as glass transition temperature, modulus, tensile strength, hardness, and chemical resistance of thermosets. In addition, copolymerization has been used to increase polymer thermomechanical properties, impart desirable solubility/dispersibility characteristics, and to introduce desirable reactive functional groups to polymers. Several of the novel polymers have been shown to meet or exceed the performance of petrochemical-based materials for some applications.
At present, about 90% of all chemicals are based on fossil resources. Due to the finite nature of fossil resources, dramatic fluctuations in the price of oil, and concerns about the environment, society has taken a greater interest in the use of renewable resources for applications that currently utilize petrochemicals. Successful further development of this renewable polymer technology has the potential to reduce societies' dependence of fossil resources, while also reducing environmental issues associated with petrochemical-based materials.
The primary objective of the project was to determine the commercial potential of a novel plant oil-based polymer technology by conducting interviews with potential customers and conducting some proof-of-concept experiments based on the customer interviews. Prior to starting the project, it was anticipated that the plant oil-based polymers would be useful in a number of markets including paints and coatings, composites, rubber compounds, inks, lubricants, and personal-care products. Of these different markets, initial focus for customer interviews was in the personal-care product market. Based on a large number of interviews with personal-care product developers from many companies, it was learned that introduction of a new ingredient into the personal-care market requires extensive testing to determine the effects of the new polymer on both the environment and human health. This testing can take multiple years and cost upwards of a million dollars. Since this situation is difficult for a start-up company, the decision was made to investigate the coatings market. Based on interviews with product developers and market experts within the coatings industry, it appeared that the plant oil polymer technology was a very nice fit since, historically, alkyd resins, which are also based on plant oils, provide unique performance attributes that cannot be duplicated using other coating resin technologies. It was also discovered that alkyd resin technologies designed for coatings with a low volatile organic content (VOC) possess multiple short-comings compared to alkyds designed for higher VOC solvent-based alkyd coatings. It was hypothesized that the plant oil polymer technology developed by the project team could potentially overcome the issues associated with current low VOC alkyd resin technology. A specialty paint application was identified through customer interviews that appeared to be a perfect fit for the plant oil-based polymer technology. The potential customer had multiple pain-points and it was expected that the plant oil polymer technology would solve each of these pain-points. As a result, the potential customer provided materials and paint formulation information to the project team and some proof-of-concept experiments were conducted. The results of the experiments were very exciting and shared with the customer. Customer sampling is in progress as well as further experimentation. A company was formed (Renuvix LLC) and a Phase I STTR grant was awarded to the company. An Phase I SBIR was also recently submitted that is focused on coating applications. Results from the experiments are being published in a book chapter as well as a conference proceeding. Overall, the project was quite successful.
