Next generation manufacturing of biobased polymeric surfactants derived from glycerol and soybean oil

Abstract: Oil-in-water emulsion are unstable thermodynamic systems that consist of oil droplets dispersed in water. Oil in water emulsions can result in behavior such as creaming, sedimentation, flocculation, coalescence, and phase inversion. Sufficient long-term kinetic stability can be achieved with the incorporation of surfactants. Surfactants are amphiphilic molecules, containing both distinct hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions, that are used to stabilize oil/water interfaces to facilitate the preparation of emulsions. Small molecule surfactants like lecithin or sodium dodecyl sulfate are prevalent in countless industries ranging from food products to soaps and detergents to asphalt-in-water emulsions. These molecules differ greatly in their design, generally with aliphatic chains providing the hydrophobic characteristics. Hydrophilic character is provided by ionic species (e.g., acids, quaternary amines, sulfates, phosphates) and or non-ionic polar moieties like polyols or alkylene oxide segments. Since surfactants must situate at the interface, its penetration into the bulk oil/water phases is limited to several Angstroms. For this reason, surfactant exchange from micelle to bulk phase is quite rapid, with a delicate balance of thermodynamic and processing factors crucial to maintaining emulsion stability. Macromolecular surfactants such as amphiphilic block copolymers, on the other hand, offer interphase regions several nanometers thick. In this manuscript, we report novel branched chain thermoplastic copolymers of poly(acrylated epoxidized high oleic soybean oil), PAEHOSO, with a hydrophilic component. Owing to the multifunctional character of the AEHOSO monomer, these amphiphilic copolymers can only be prepared with controlled radical polymerization techniques like reversible addition chain transfer polymerization; otherwise, macrogelation will ensue early in the polymerization process. Along with high degrees of molecular weight control, volatile solvents were not required to synthesize the final product allowing for a facile approach to scale-up