Vegetable Oil-Based Polymers: Properties, Processing and Applications

The author presents a textbook on conventional vegetable-oil polymers that also discusses an avanced class of dendritic polymers for undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of materials science and engineering, medical science and engineering, environmental science and engineering, biochemical engineering and biotechnology. The book covers the basic concept, preparation, characterization, properties, processing and applications of vegetable-oil based conventional polymers, highly branched hyperbranched polymers, polymer composites and nanocomposites. Opening chapters discuss the fundamentals of polymers and offers a basic understanding of biodegradable polymers. The remaining chapters discuss vegetable oils and their derivatives, including polymers and their technologies.

This book provides a comprehensive review of the research in this important field. After an introduction to classification and polymerization, chapters go on to review the factors involved in polymer biodegradation. They explore the extraction, purification and application of vegetable oils, vegetable oil based polyesters and poly(ester amide)s, polyurethanes and epoxies. Chapters also review polyamides, polyolefins and vegetable oil-based hyperbranched polymers. The book concludes with an analysis of vegetable oil-based polymer composites and polymer nanocomposites. 

Niranjan Karak is Professor of Polymer Science and Technology and Head of the Chemical Sciences Department at Tezpur University, India.

Fundamentals of polymers; Biodegradable polymers; Vegetable oils and their derivatives; Vegetable oil-based polyesters; Vegetable oil-based poly(ester amide)s; Vegetableoil-based polyurethanes; Vegetable oil-based epoxies; Polyamides, polyolefins and other vegetable oil-based polymers;  Vegetable oil-based hyperbranched polymers; Vegetable oil-based polymer composites; Vegetable oil-based polymer nanocomposites