Polyols based on renewable feedstocks: A significant alternative

The efforts of both industrialised and developing countries to use and to cultivate vegetable oils as renewable source for food and foodstuff manufacture have led to a high growth in worldwide natural oil production. These efforts have also led to an expansion in the use of natural oils as a convenient raw material base for various industrial applications, including the manufacture of raw materials for making polyurethanes. These oils can be converted using a wide range of chemical technologies such as splitting, transesterification, epoxidation or hydrogenation, to yield polyfunctional alcohols, the so-called oleochemical polyols. These renewable ingredients, in turn, provide new raw materials for making polyurethane foams, flooring materials, surface protective coatings, adhesives or castings.