ABSTRACT
Acknowledgments ................................................................................... 41 Keywords ................................................................................................ 42 References ............................................................................................... 42
2.1 INTRODUCTION
During the last decade environmental concerns have risen in the modern society and have lead to the search of sustainable alternatives for the global development. Therefore, efforts in research for the new formulations in environmentally-friendly materials are currently increasing. In this sense, the substitution of materials obtained from petrochemical sources by others with renewable origin, such as vegetable oils, is one of the most studied possibilities to reduce the global dependency to fossil fuels. These materials are currently under development and the final goal of these new studies would be the reduction of the industrial carbon footprint and a significant improvement in the sustainability of the current production processes. The versatility and ability to chemical transformation of vegetable oils make them good candidates to be used as polymer matrices after some adequate modifications, giving rise to polymers such as thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPUs). In this context, the main goal of the present work is the proposal of thermoplastic formulations based on the use of vegetable oils as polymer matrices. The study of chemical structures, morphologies, thermal and mechanical behavior of different bio-based TPUs will be presented in this chapter.
