New family of unsaturated polyamides from novel long-chain biomass-derived diacids
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The function of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering has been to prepare students for the study and application of chemistry in industry. This focus has included preparation for employment in various industries as well as the development, design, and operation of equipment and processes within industry.Through the CBE Department, Iowa State University is nationally recognized for its initiatives in bioinformatics, biomaterials, bioproducts, metabolic/tissue engineering, multiphase computational fluid dynamics, advanced polymeric materials and nanostructured materials.
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The Department of Chemical Engineering was founded in 1913 under the Department of Physics and Illuminating Engineering. From 1915 to 1931 it was jointly administered by the Divisions of Industrial Science and Engineering, and from 1931 onward it has been under the Division/College of Engineering. In 1928 it merged with Mining Engineering, and from 1973–1979 it merged with Nuclear Engineering. It became Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2005.
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1913 - present
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- Department of Chemical Engineering (1913–1928)
- Department of Chemical and Mining Engineering (1928–1957)
- Department of Chemical Engineering (1957–1973, 1979–2005)
- Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (2005–present)
- College of Engineering(parent college)
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Abstract
A new class of bio-based aliphatic unsaturated polyamides (PA) is synthesized from C16-rich monounsaturated diacid (C16:1 diacids). C16:1 diacids are derived from fermented biomass intermediates through multistep purifications and hydrolysis. In this regards, we start with a biomass derived feedstock from REG Life Science LLC. The feedstock is a mixture of a variety of saturated and unsaturated C14 to C18 fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs), fatty diacid dimethyl esters (FDADEs), ω-hydroxyl fatty methyl esters (ω-OH FAMEs) and ω-1 hydroxyl fatty methyl esters (ω-1 OH FAMEs). We aim at extraction of FDADEs to use as the precursor for polyamide production. FDADEs is of our interest as they have ester groups on both ends of their molecule that makes them a great candidate for poly-condensation reaction. However, the other fractions possess only one ester group and act as the chain terminator in the reaction which drastically reduce the reaction conversion and lead to significant decrease in the polymer molecular weight. Therefore, here we develop a separation method to achieve FDADEs with the highest purity to reach a high degree of conversion in the polymerization reaction. The final FDADEs are a mixture of saturated and unsaturated diesters with the chain length from C14 to C18 while the dominated fraction is C16:1 diester. The diester moiety in FDADEs are converted to diacid through a basic hydrolysis. The diacid mixture is dominated by mono-unsaturated diacid with the aliphatic chain length of 16 (C16:1 diacid). The presence of a double bond in the center of the C16:1 diacid is a bio-advantage which distinguishes this diacid from petroleum-based dicarboxylic C16:0 acids.
This bio-advantaged diacid is then utilized to synthesize a new unsaturated homo-polyamide PA6u16. The polymer properties are compared with PA6,16 made from petroleum-based C16 diacid. Moreover, two series of new co-polyamides namely PA6,6-co-PA6u16(x) and PA6,12-co-PA6u16(x) are made by copolymerization of PA6u16 with PA6,6 and PA6,12 respectively. The copolymers are designed to retain the desired thermal and mechanical characteristics of petroleum-based PA6,6 and PA6,12 while spawning the double bond along the polymer backbone. This provides opportunities to add material features such as super-hydrophobicity, corrosion resistance, and flame retardancy by polymer or monomer functionalization.