Title: Plant oil-based aqueous dispersions and smart composites with enhanced benefits

Biography:

Dr. Madbouly received his Ph.D. from the Department of Organic and Polymeric Materials, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. He has been awarded the Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral Fellowship and the Japan Society for Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship. He served as a senior research scientist University of Southern Mississippi and at the Institute of Polymer Research, GKSS, Germany. He also worked as Research Assistant Professor at Iowa State University and Senor Polymer Engineer at Schlumberger. He published over 110 peer-reviewed journal papers, 8 patents, two books, 21 book chapters, presented more than 100 talks at national and international meetings, and serves as a frequent reviewer and referee.

Abstract

Replacing petroleum-based polymers with alternative renewable, chemically modified, and cost-effective natural products will have a significant positive impact on the environment and the sustainable polymer industry. Plant oils are widely used as renewable natural materials to obtain new green low-molecular weight monomers suitable for the synthesis of sustainable multifunctional polymers and composites with outstanding mechanical, thermal, and dielectric properties. These plant oil-based polymers and composites have similar performance to their petrochemical counterparts. Plant oils and lignin were chemical functionalized to synthesize aqueous- polyurethane dispersion with nanoscale morphology and excellent dispersion stability. The chemically modified plant oils were also utilized to fabricate bio-based norbornenyl-functionalized monomers suitable for ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) to create novel high-temperature plant oil-based thermosets. The aqueous dispersions, polymer films, composites, and thermosets were characterized using a wide range of analytical techniques, such as small amplitude rheometer, TEM, DSC, TGA, DMA, etc. This work is a part of global efforts to develop innovative technologies to transform these natural resources into novel monomers and polymers. Some of these technologies have already generated competitive industrial products with comparable properties to conventional petrochemical polymers.