Location: Bio-oils Research
Project Number: 5010-30600-006-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: May 9, 2025
End Date: May 9, 2030
Objective:
Objective 1: Develop sustainable monomers and composites from vegetable oils and other agricultural materials as replacements for nonrenewable industrial materials.
Sub-objective 1A: Develop renewable monomers with novel chemical structures from vegetable oils as building blocks for biobased industrial polymers.
Sub-objective 1B: Develop vegetable oil-based composites as sustainable and renewable replacements for food packaging and structural applications.
Objective 2: Develop biopolymers from vegetable oils as sustainable and renewable replacements for bisphenol A (BPA)-based epoxy resins, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and halogenated flame retardants.
Sub-objective 2A: Develop biobased alternatives to BPA-based epoxy resins for adhesive and coatings applications.
Sub-objective 2B: Develop biobased alternatives to PFAS for food packaging and coatings applications.
Sub-objective 2C: Develop biobased alternatives to halogenated flame retardants (HFR) for construction, structural, and insulation applications.
Approach:
American agriculture faces a complex web of economic and technical challenges that threaten rural prosperity and farmer viability. Farmers are therefore in need of new agricultural products and innovations that will simultaneously strengthen American resilience, maximize farmer income, and enhance rural economies. These materials and methods will provide additional economic value to American farmers by developing new high-value products from agricultural materials. Biobased alternatives to petroleum-derived polymers have great potential to improve sustainability, reduce toxicity, eliminate environmentally persistent substances, and lower greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously benefiting rural economies and American agriculture. Enabling production of high-value bioproducts from low-cost agricultural feedstocks is the most likely pathway to commercial success, as lower value materials often have difficulty competing economically with petroleum-based incumbents. The objective of this plan is to replace high-value yet problematic conventional industrial materials with sustainable, biodegradable, and nontoxic alternatives derived from vegetable oils and other agricultural feedstocks. Specific targets include epoxy resins derived from endocrine-disrupting bisphenol A, environmentally persistent per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, e.g. "forever chemicals", and halogenated flame-retardants, all of which have deleterious effects on human and ecological health, surface and groundwater supplies, soils, and the food chain. Moreover, the starting materials, reagents, and processes used to produce incumbent petrochemical materials are toxic, corrosive, and dangerous. The approach proposed in this plan involves the facile chemical modification of agricultural materials while leveraging the principles of green chemistry to arrive at the desired chemical structures with minimal environmental impact. The newly developed biomaterials will be evaluated for appropriate industrial applications and compared to the nonrenewable and nonbiodegradable incumbent products they are intended to replace. Thus, the goal of the proposed plan is to facilitate the transition to a circular, sustainable, and biobased economy that is enabled by production of commercially significant products and technologies from agricultural materials. Stakeholders who will benefit from this research are farmers, rural economies, agricultural companies, commodity groups searching for new applications of feedstocks, chemical companies looking to transition away from petroleum feedstocks, and environmentally conscious consumers. Other impactful benefits include improvements to ecosystems, drinking water supplies, food systems, soils, and the health of the American people.