Oils and CO2, a promising combination for designing insulating foams and high performance coatings

Making plastics more sustainable by valorizing waste CO2 as a cheap, inexhaustible and renewable feedstock is an early stage technology with strong innovation potential that imposes itself as a strategic driver for developing future low carbon footprint materials and technologies. With a global production estimated to 18 million tons for 2016, polyurethane (PU) is one of the most important polymers in our everyday life applications (automotive, building and construction, coatings, etc.). Industrially, PU is produced by step-growth polymerization between di- or polyisocyanates and di- or polyols. However, isocyanates are toxic and drastic changes in the REACH regulations limiting/banning the use of isocyanates are expected. There is a need today to develop new greener and safer alternatives to produce PU. Valorizing CO2 as C1 feedstock for producing precursors entering in the synthesis of polyurethanes by a non-isocyanate route (NIPU) is a promising strategy to solve this challenge.
In this talk, we will focus on the synthesis and characterization of novel NIPUs foams for thermal insulation, and NIPUs coatings for metal protection. Our research highlights benefit of merging bio-resources (such as vegetable oils) with carbon dioxide transformation.
In the first part of this talk, we will report on the fast synthesis of bio- and CO2-sourced cyclic carbonates by coupling CO2 with epoxides using a new highly efficient bicomponent homogeneous organocatalyst under solvent-free and mild experimental conditions. The mechanism of the activation of the reaction will be discussed, and scaling up of the technology will be demonstrated (15kg scale). In the second part, we will illustrate the use of these bio- and CO2-sourced cyclic carbonates for the production of microcellular NIPU foams with closed cells morphology for thermal insulating applications, but also for preparing hybrid NIPUs coatings for metal protection.