On the use of carbon dioxide and vegetable oil for the synthesis of bio-based cyclic carbonates

The uncertain cost of petroleum and its expected depletion in the near future prompted the scientific community to search for new sources of carbon just inexpensive, abundant and easily exploitable. Combining the use of renewable resources such as vegetable oils and carbon dioxide as a carbon source for the development of a sustainable chemistry is very promising. Thus, this research project fits within the framework of the chemical fixation of CO2 and the utilization of vegetable oils as a substitute for basic petroleum derivatives for the production of new monomers and new bio-based organic polymers. As a first step, the catalytic synthesis of cyclic carbonate monomers from CO2 and epoxidized vegetable oils (and/or the corresponding fatty esters) will be considered. The synthesis of non-isocyanates polyurethanes (NIPUS) will then be performed by reacting in bulk these new monomers with diamines under mild heating. In this talk, we will present the results that we have obtained on the first step of the process. Namely, we have investigated various catalytic platforms enabling the cycloaddition of CO2 on epoxidized oils in the most efficient way under mild conditions. For such task, in situ kinetic follow-up of this reaction has been performed by FT-IR or Raman spectroscopy in order to identify the best catalytic systems and to evaluate the influence of various parameters (pressure, temperature catalyst concentration, nature of epoxidized oil) on the yields and the reaction kinetics. Then, the most efficient catalytic systems have been investigated by molecular modeling in order to identify the key structural parameters of the catalyst that govern its efficiency.