TY - JOUR T1 - Ecopolyol Production from Industrial Cork Powder via Acid Liquefaction Using Polyhydric Alcohols JF - ACS SUSTAINABLE CHEMISTRY & ENGINEERING Y1 - 2014 A1 - Soares, Belinda A1 - Gama, Nuno A1 - Freire, Carmen A1 - Barros-Timmons, Ana A1 - Brandão, Inês A1 - Silva, Rui A1 - Pascoal Neto, Carlos A1 - Ferreira, Artur KW - Glycerol KW - Liquefaction process KW - PEG 400 KW - Polyols AB - Ecopolyol production from acid liquefaction of cork powder was studied
for the first time using PEG 400 and glycerol as liquefaction solvents
in the presence of sulfuric acid at moderate temperature and atmospheric
pressure. The effect of the temperature, concentration of catalyst, and
time on the liquefaction yield has been investigated using a fixed set
of reaction conditions namely, a liquefaction solvent mixture/cork
powder ratio of 5/1 and a solvent mixture PEG 400/glycerol ratio of
90/10. The full-factorial design of experiments (DOE) 23 was applied to
obtain an optimized set of liquefaction conditions aiming at minimizing
the residue content. The minimum residue contents experimentally
obtained in this study were 29 wt %, related to cork powder, which were
achieved at 150 C, 4 wt % of sulfuric acid, and 60 min. This value
corresponds to 5 wt % of residue per total mass of reaction product.
The polyols obtained under optimal conditions present similar
characteristics (hydroxyl number value 219 mg(KOH)/g(polyol) and
viscosity 2875 cP, at 25 degrees C) to those of petroleum-based polyols
typically used in the polyurethane foam industry. PB - AMER CHEMICAL SOC CY - 1155 16TH ST, NW, WASHINGTON, DC 20036 USA VL - 2 ER -