Polymerization of Soybean Oil with Superacids

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Polymerization of oil has been reviewed in different sources of literature, since it has various theoretical aspects as well as the practical applications. Ionescu and Petrović discussed the process of polymerization of oils in the work Soybean - Applications and Technology: Polymerization of Soybean Oil with Superacids. They proving that polymer-ization of oil can be carried out at the temperature of 90 °C. In the work, it is stated that soybeans have great economic importance and thus the processes of polymerization, which can be conducted with lower energetic expenses, are crucial to investigate (13).
The researchers took out a patent for the method of cationic polymerization of unsaturated biological oils (14). The reaction is stated to be provided due to the double bonds, which are initiated by the force of the superacids. The benefits of the polymerized oils are proved to have about 10-200 times more viscidity and high level of unsaturation as compared to the initial vegetable oils.
Cationic polymerization of styrenes by protonic acids and their derivatives (15) discussed the process of the cationic polymerizations from the point of view of polymeri-zation rate and molecular weight distribution. The impact of the superacids on the process is reviewed but it is stated that low concentrations of the acids were employed in the ex-periments. Protonic acids were investigated as to their role in polymerization. The mech-anism of the polymerization termination and its specification is disclosed in the article.
Principles of Polymerization (16) provide a necessary insight into the general pro-cess of the polymerization. The work discloses different variants of the practical use of polymeric structures in industry, household, and...

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...of semi-crystalline wax-like material.
Apart from the soybeans, there are also other plants that can be used for produc-tion of the dimer acids and dimer esters, such as discussed in the article Preparation of Meadowfoam Dimer Acids and Dimer Esters, and Their Use as Lubricants (22). The re-searchers state that dimer acids can be produced as a result of the clay-catalyzed reaction from the meadowfoam alternative crop. Dimer acids that can be produced from this plant, which is still used primarily for the cosmetic and medical purposes, have high level of viscosity that can be even compatible with the commercial dimer esters. It is recorded that dimer acids and dimer esters can have the properties that are comparatively equal with those of the commercial representatives. It can be concluded that production of the dimer acids of the plant origin has strong potential.

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