The paper “Biobased Thermosetting Polyester Resin for High-Performance Applications” is highlighted on the front cover of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (Volume 10, Issue 11, published on March 21, 2022).

This paper shows some of the work developed within the CORE Group, a research group at CERIS, towards the development of novel routes for achieving biobased unsaturated polyester resins from building blocks derived from renewable raw materials and reactive diluents with low styrene content. The biobased unsaturated polyester resins highlighted in this paper exhibited high mechanical and thermomechanical performance while having over 50% (by weight) of their content derived from renewable resources.

According to the abstract “reducing the dependency from petroleum-based monomers and crosslinkers is an increasingly important goal for the plastics industry. This is being enabled by the growing diversity and availability of alternative biobased products derived from renewable resources, some of which are compatible with the production of more sustainable resins for high-performance applications”.

The research paper also highlights “the development of sustainable polymers is stimulated by policy, legislation, and international agreements, with the fundamental shift to a biobased production and economy representing an everyday challenge in many sectors. Most research on polymers for industrial applications has focused on thermoplastics, particularly for the packaging industry”.

The development of unsaturated polyesters (UPs) and their crosslinked resins (UPRs) based on 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) and other biobased building blocks are presented in the paper, which also highlights the original features of these Ups.