Recently, polymers derived from renewable resources are gaining a growing interest mainly due to the fact that they can reduce the environmental impact of industrial activity providing novel sustainable and eco-efficient products which can replace the use of traditional petrochemical derived resins in many sectors.
In this frame a special research attention has been devoted to epoxy resins given their very interesting properties in terms of thermal and mechanical behaviors.
In light of these considerations, main aim of this work was to prepare fully biobased epoxy formulations from commercial vegetable oils as epoxidized linseed oil and to compare their performances with respect to a classical epoxy resin cured under the same conditions.
All investigated precursors were crosslinked in presence of tetrahydrophtalic anhydride as curing agent and 1-methylimidazole as accelerator, mixing the constituents according to specific previously identified ratios. The cure cycle was 40 min at 105 °C, followed by 90 min at 115 °C and 30 min 125 °C. Physical properties of cured networks were evaluated by thermal, mechanical and dynamic-mechanical tests. Moreover, absorption behaviors with respect to apolar and polar solvents were considered for all epoxy systems in order to highlight the occurrence of any physical effects in terms of swelling, plasticization and/or degradation of the network structure.
