| Popis: |
One of the industries most dependent on fossil fuels is the polymer industry: over 99% of polymer production uses monomers derived from oil and gas. For this reason, polymers derived from biomass (biopolymers) are widely developed. Different monomers derived from biomass have been proposed in the last decades: lignin, saccharides, vegetable oils, and terpenes, among others. On the other hand, thermosetting polymers are advantageous in a broad range of industrial applications due to their chemical and thermal resistance and excellent mechanical performance. However, once finished their useful life, due to the impossibility of being recycled, they become an environmental problem, being incineration or landfill the only solutions. A new family of polymeric materials is being developed to solve thermosetting recycling issues, starting from renewable materials. They present a covalent adaptable network structure (vitrimeric materials) whose topology can be changed by thermally activated reversible chemical processes. These reversible reactions allow this type of cross-linked polymers' reprocessing and recycling and exhibit other excellent characteristics such as self-healing or self-welding properties |
