Approach to Circular Chemistry Preparing New Polyesters from Olive Oil

Area of Science:

• Polymer Chemistry
• Green Chemistry
• Materials Science

Background:

• Circular chemistry faces challenges in valorizing waste cooking oils into useful materials.
• Olive oil, a common cooking oil, presents an underutilized resource for sustainable chemical synthesis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To synthesize novel bio-based polyesters from epoxidized olive oil and cyclic anhydrides.
• To explore the use of organocatalysis for efficient polyesterification.
• To characterize the properties of the resulting polyesters.

Main Methods:

• Epoxidation of cooking olive oil (COO) to obtain epoxidized olive oil (EOO).
• Polymerization of EOO with phthalic anhydride (PA), maleic anhydride (MA), and succinic anhydride (SA) using a bis(guanidine) organocatalyst and tetrabutylammonium iodide (Bu4NI).
• Characterization of synthesized polyesters using NMR, FTIR, TGA, and SEM.

Main Results:

• Successful synthesis of poly(EOO-co-PA) and poly(EOO-co-MA) under mild conditions (80 °C, 5 h, toluene).
• Poly(EOO-co-SA) required more extreme conditions for synthesis.
• Exclusively obtained the trans isomer for the maleic anhydride-based polyester.
• Characterization confirmed the structure and properties of the novel biopolyesters.

Conclusions:

• Epoxidized olive oil and cyclic anhydrides are viable precursors for bio-based polyesters.
• The developed organocatalytic system enables efficient synthesis of these sustainable polymers.
• This work demonstrates an innovative approach to upcycling waste cooking oil into high-value materials.