Renewable polyols for advanced polyurethane foams from diverse biomass resources

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Abstract

This review highlights recent advances in the synthesis of renewable polyols, used for making polyurethane foams, from biomass.

Abstract

Polyols, used for making polyurethane (PU) and polyisocyanurate (PIR) foams, are a topic of interest due to the strong growth of the foam market during the last few decades. Polyols used for their elaboration constitute the majority of polyol consumption worldwide. The large availability of chemicals and compounds from biomass has opened up a vast range of opportunities to develop partially or fully biobased polyols, to be added to foam formulations. This review is focused on recent advances in the synthesis of renewable polyols, used for PU and PIR foams. Polyols have been classified by their chemical structures. The corresponding chemical pathways have been connected with the properties of the final PU-based foams. Correlations were made between the origin of the polyol, the chemical modifications, and the properties and morphologies of the corresponding foams. Recent advances in non-isocyanate polyurethane foams have been also taken into consideration.

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Chemical modification of lignins: Towards biobased polymers

Luc Averous, Stéphanie Laurichesse (2014)

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Polymer biodegradation: mechanisms and estimation techniques.

Nathalie Lucas, Christophe Bienaimé, Christian Belloy … (2008)

Within the frame of the sustainable development, new materials are being conceived in order to increase their biodegradability properties. Biodegradation is considered to take place throughout three stages: biodeterioration, biofragmentation and assimilation, without neglect the participation of abiotic factors. However, most of the techniques used by researchers in this area are inadequate to provide evidence of the final stage: assimilation. In this review, we describe the different stages of biodegradation and we state several techniques used by some authors working in this domain. Validate assimilation (including mineralisation) is an important aspect to guarantee the real biodegradability of items of consumption (in particular friendly environmental new materials). The aim of this review is to emphasise the importance of measure as well as possible, the last stage of the biodegradation, in order to certify the integration of new materials into the biogeochemical cycles. Finally, we give a perspective to use the natural labelling of stable isotopes in the environment, by means of a new methodology based on the isotopic fractionation to validate assimilation by microorganisms.