The development of palm oil based acrylated resins and their applications

Since Malaysia provides 57 and 75% of the world's production and exports of palm oil respectively, it is natural that we should be in the forefront of the research of widening the use of palm oil in oleochemicals industry, which are currently increase in popularity. The presence of unsaturation in the fatty acids of vegetable oils such as palm oil, technically paves the way for the production of acrylated resins. The more unsaturated the oil, the better it will perform in the radiation curing related applications. The first acrylated palm oil was synthesised in early 1989, through acrylation process, whereby, acrylic acid is introduced into oxirane group of the epoxidised palm oil products, EPOP, at 100-130 deg C in the presence of triethylamine, TEA, as a catalyst and 4-methoxyphenol as an inhibitor. The acrylated products namely epoxidised palm oil (olein) acrylate, EPOLA/EPOPA, was found curable when subjected to UV or EB irradiations. The EPOLA based formulated resins were satisfactorily been used as radiation curable coating materials on various substrates such as woods, bamboos, glass, ceramics and metals without any major defects at reasonably fast cure rate. Preliminary investigations also revealed their potentials as radiation curable pressure sensitive adhesives and printing inks. Isocyanation of EPOLAs at 50 to 90deg C with the presence of 1% inhibitor such as 4-methoxyphenol resulted in resins called Palm oil based urethane acrylates, POBUA. This newly synthesised resins possess certain advantages over EPOLA such as higher molecular weight, better crosslinking density, abrasion resistance, tensile properties and also pendulum hardness. Early results might suggest that POBUA is in a better position to be used as resins for radiation curing of surface coating applications