Bioeconomy Institute

The major purpose of this project is to develop soy/corn oil plastic composites and an examination of their properties. The research team will investigate regular, low saturation and conjugated low saturation soy oils, and regular and conjugated corn oils. The low saturation soy oil is commercially available. Past research has found that all of these oils will produce viable plastics using cationic procedures. Because the cationic polymerization of soy/corn oils has been thoroughly investigated, and preliminary work carried out on cationic soy composites, initial efforts will focus on soy/corn plastic composites prepared by cationic polymerization.

With the help of this research, soy/corn plastics can be made at a significantly lower cost than most petroleum-based resins using well established technology. Anticipated is that new, affordable polymer composites with industrially viable properties will be developed that should find wide utility as structural materials.

Principal Investigators:

Richard Larock, Iowa State University

Associated Contracts or Grants:

Development of Novel Plastics from Agricultural Oils (Archer Daniels Midland)
Development of Soy/Corn Oil Plastics Composites (University of Illinois)

Participating and/or Sponsoring Organizations:

Archer Daniels Midland
University of Illinois
Environmental Protection Agency
Iowa Soybean Promotion Board