New epoxy resins from oil palm components

New types of epoxy resins,which are derived from plant components,such as saccharides and lignin,have been developed in our laboratory. oil palm components such as lignin,saccharides,lignocellulose,glycerol and fatty acids can be included in the above epoxy resin system. alcoholysis lignin (al) was dissolved in glycerol (gly) and ethylene glycol (eg),and the obtained mixture was allowed to react with succinic anhydride to form a mixture of ester-carboxylic acid derivatives (al-gly polyacid,alglypa and al-eg polyacid,alegpa). the mixture of alegpa and alegpa was allowed to react with glycerol diglycidyl ether (glygde) in the presence of a catalytic amount of dimethylbenzylamine to form epoxy resins. the molar ratio of epoxy groups to carboxylic acid groups (epoxy/acid ratio,mol mol-1) was maintained at 1.0. the contents of alglypa in the mixture of alglypa and alegpa (alglypa content) were varied from 0% to 100%. the thermal properties of the epoxy resins were studied by differential scanning calorimetry (dsc) and thermogravimetry (tg). glass transition temperature (tg) of the epoxy resins increased with increasing alglypa content,suggesting that the lignin and glycerol structures act as hard segments in the epoxy resin networks. thermal decomposition temperature (td) of the epoxy resins was almost constant regardless of alglypa content.