A Novel Approach for Sunflower Oil Based Polyol Production by Ring Opening of Epoxidized Linoleic Acid

In numerous chemical industrial sectors, the utilization of epoxidized vegetable oil has emerged as a prospective growing market for polymer development. The experiment was to discover the effectiveness of formic acid to sunflower oil molar ratio and catalysts type toward epoxidation reaction for polyols formation. Hydrolysis of an epoxide involved the reaction of an epoxide with water, resulting in the formation of a diol. Sunflower-based epoxide was carried out by in situ using performic acid mechanism with the temperature of 80°C. The optimum relative conversion to oxirane was obtained within 50 min which is 41.37% from 1:1 molar ratio of formic acid to sunflower oil and natural zeolite as a catalyst. The genetic algorithm was used to find the optimal set of parameters in the mathematical model, and MATLAB is used to implement the numerical integration and the optimization process. The kinetic rate, k parameters obtained k₁₁ = 0.169, k₁₂ = 33.072, k₂ = 5.244 for epoxidation palm oil, and k₃ = 3.89 × 10⁻⁵ in degradation process.