ABSTRACT
130Recently, various types of useful condensation polymers, such as polyurethanes, polyesters and polyethers, are being produced from natural oils. Direct polymerization of oils has been used in coatings industries for a long time. It is also found that, these oils are used in food industries as well as for the production of coatings, inks, plasticizers, lubricants, and agrochemicals. Oils can be thermally polymerized by heating at high temperature and the products are oligomers of high viscosity. In this chapter, we have discussed about the polymerization of natural oils by different methods and the applications in the detection of volatile organic compounds. Free radical polymerizations of tung oil, linseed oil, and castor oil are carried out by using benzoyl peroxide as initiator. Quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) is a mass-sensitive device. Its principle is based on the interactions between the coated surface of quartz crystal and the analytes. The developed sensors are used for the detection of volatile organic compounds like benzene, toluene, o-xylene, p-cresol, and aliphatic amines. It is observed that the polymerized linseed oil-based sensors show good sensitivity and selectivity toward benzene, toluene, o-xylene, and p-cresol whereas the polymerized castor oil and polymerized tung oil-based sensors are useful for aliphatic amines detection.
