With soaring petroleum prices, polyols from vegetable oils are increasingly viable alternatives to petroleum polyols. MPOB has developed a palm-based polyol for the polyurethane (PU) industry, which consumes 4.5 million tonnes worldwide annually. The polyol is produced from palm fatty acids, and can be made into PU coating, adhesives, sealants and elastomers. The fatty acids used as raw material is a by-product from the oleochemicals industry – palm kernel oil after removal of lauric and myristic acids for the production of surfactants. The by-product mainly contains oleic acid with small amounts of other fatty acids, like linoleic, and fetches a low price. Another raw material is glycerol, which is another co-product from the oleochemical. The price of glycerol have been greatly affected by development of biodiesel industry. In order to safeguard the interest of glycerol, a lot of work have been done to diversify the usage of glycerol by converting it into other useful chemicals and one of the value-added products is polyol. This article describes the use of palm fatty acids and glycerol to make polyol.

Main Research: Hoong Seng Soi