Synthetical modification of plant oil‐based plasticizer with CO2 leads to reduced migration from NBR rubber

The increasing environmental and toxic health concerns due to phthalate‐based plasticizers are pushing researchers to eliminate these market leader plasticizers and to find nature‐friendly bio‐based plasticizers with reduced migration. The present study is also an effort in this regard. Herein, the epoxidized monoester of glycerol formal based on soybean oil is synthetically modified by carbonation in the presence of a catalyst to increase the polarity of the plasticizer. These modified and pristine plasticizers were incorporated in acrylonitrile─butadiene rubber and their migration analysis during heating the sample for 60 h were performed using fourier transform infrared spectroscopy with attenuated total reflectance (FTIR‐ATR) by observing the absorbance of the characteristic carbonyl stretching vibration peak (1736 cm−1) of plasticizer relative to the CH stretching vibration of butadiene (968 cm−1). The results of migration kinetics and mechanical testing demonstrated reduction of diffusion coefficients by modification while hardness and tensile strength are hardly affected. In addition to the fact that soybean oil as a natural resource is more sustainable, the additional synthesis step of binding CO2 is advantageous for a green chemistry approach.