Plant Oils as Platform Chemicals for Polyurethane Synthesis: Current State-of-the-Art

Plant oils are already one of the most important platform chemicals for the chemical industry due to its universal availability, inherent biodegradability, and low price. Nowadays, plant oils are already a commercial source of multifunctional monomers and oligomers for polyurethane synthesis, and the design of novel biobased polyols derived from them is an active area of research. By taking advantage of the wide variety of possibilities for chemical modification of plant oils, there is a broad palette of strategies to functionalize its structure with hydroxyl groups. The purpose of this review is to comprehensively overview recent developments on the preparation of biobased polyols from plant oils, covering from the general epoxidation and ring-opening approach to novel routes based on thiol-ene click chemistry as well as to highlight the properties of polyurethanes obtained from them.