Bio-based materials from waste cooking oil with tunable properties

Due to socioeconomic and environmental factors, the research and applications of bio-based polymers is a rapidly expanding field. The use of vegetable oils as starting materials is undoubtedly one of the explored approaches. These feedstocks can be employed as starting material for the synthesis of conventional monomers or in other applications as fragments for the functionalization of the polymer. Nevertheless, a significant obstacle to vegetable oils' widespread use is their high production cost, due to the extraction and purification of pure vegetable oils. Waste Cooking Oil (WOC) is a promising alternative to vegetable oils in the development of bio-based materials since it is far cheaper than pure vegetable oils and pursues waste valorisation and sustainability principles. In this work, we envisioned to exploit the reactivity of double bonds contained in triglycerides, the main ingredients of WCO. Various transformations have been taken into account, from established procedures to novel processes. We initially designed the preparation of the fatty monomer according to a two-step sequence based on epoxidation followed by the addition of carboxylic acid, focusing our attention on the employment of bio-based building blocks. Our ultimate goal is to gradually replace fossil feedstocks with materials originated from plant-derived renewable sources, which requires both the application of well-established reactions and the development of novel reactions to the production of new tailor-made compounds capable of producing competitive performance materials. Thermal and mechanical properties of the synthesized materials have been studied. The results showed not only the possibility of replacing the properties of fossil building blocks but even overcoming them in terms of final material properties and performance.