Combining Renewable Eleostearic Acid and Eugenol to Fabricate Sustainable Plasticizer and Its Effect of Plasticizing on PVC

The recent studies on sustainable plasticizer mainly focus on raw material source, synthesis method and plasticization, but the effect of chemical functional groups (epoxy group and ester group) of sustainable plasticizer on compatibility and thermal stability of plasticized polyvinyl chlorid (PVC) materials has been ignored. In this study, two kinds of sustainable plasticizers (eleostearic acid eugenol ester (EAEE) and epoxidized EAEE) were synthesized to plasticize PVC films using eleostearic acid and eugenol. Compared to EAEE, PVC plasticized with epoxidized EAEE showed more flexible and thermal stability. Due to forming more hydrogen bonds between PVC chains and epoxidized EAEE than that of PVC chains, the efficient plasticizing on PVC with epoxidized EAEE was more than EAEE. Because of the flexible alkane chains and polar group (ester groups and epoxy groups) in the structure of epoxidized EAEE, the intermolecular interaction force with PVC was stronger than EAEE, and there was homogeneous and smooth surface of plasticized PVC films. Graphical Abstract