Green plasticizer for polymeric material.

PVC is the third largly used polymeric material after PE & PP. Even though it is commodity polymer, It is thermally sensitive, difficult to process and brittle material. In order to ease process ability & induce flexibility various method like co-polymerization, blending, grafting, increasing molecular weight, addition of fibre fillers & addition of plasticizers have been investigated for PVC. Among all the above mentioned methods addition of the plasticizers have been investigated more beneficial for PVC. Plasticizers like Dioctyl thalate, Diethyl hexyl thalate, Di-isoneonyl thalate, Dibutyl thalate, tritrolyl phosphate etc. have been utilized for PVC plasticization. Though these plasticizers are easily available & cost effective, they are found to be environmentally toxic & health hazardous. Many countries have been banned or restricted the import of the PVC product (European union and US) using these plasticizers. So, there is need to produce green plasticizers using non toxic renewable resources. Available plant source is topic of recent research in academics & industries.

In present research work, we propose to synthesize green plasticizer using Ricinolic acid (RA) which is cheap, non-toxic, non-renewable raw material obtained from plant source. We aim to synthesize ester amide of RA by reacting with dimethyl amine and benzoic acid. Using two step non-solvent based condensation process to synthesize ester amide of RA can be used as both primary & secondary plasticizer for PVC. This plasticizer is expected to induce plasticization effect on PVC on the basis of following points-

- Oligomeric structure of plasticizer - Polarity induced by amide linkage- Polarity induced by ester linkage- Polarity induced by resonance structure of benzene

This would help in generating higher level of intermolecular forces of attraction in plasticizer & PVC material. Plasticized PVC is utilized/ tested for various characterization studies like mechanical, thermal, rheological, color, crystallinity , chemical resistance etc.

When used as secondary plasticizer, synthesized plasticizer would be used as partial replacement for DOP upto 40phr, and above characterization tests will be taken place.

Gaur gum is natural polymer obtained from ground endosperm of gaur bean. India is largest producer, about 80% of world production. It is extremely hydrophilic polymer & films prepared from it are too brittle. It is usually added with 20% (w/w) ethylene glycol (EG) in order to make it flexible and capable for film formation. However EG is non renewable, costly & non-ecofriendly. Thus this research work is tried to replace conventional plasticizer of gaur gum with cheap, renewable and eco-friendly raw material ie. Castor oil (CA). concentration of CA varied as 1, 3, 5 w% in gaur gum to prepare film, which are characterized for mechanical, thermal, rheological, crystallinity, color, optical etc. properties.

Thus greener of plasticization for commodity polymer like polyvinyl chloride and bio polymer like gaur gum will be investigated.