Diethanolamides of Castor Oil as Polyols for the Development of Water-Blown Polyurethane Foam

Castor oil was chemically modified into a diethanolamide by a two step process. The first step was the hydroxylation of double bonds in castor oil and second step was the transamidation using diethanolamine to increase the hydroxyl value. Water blown polyurethane foams were developed with this castor oil based polyol using polypropylene glycol of molecular weight 1,000 as the copolyol and polymeric MDI. The density and mechanical properties namely compression and flexural strength depended on the composition of the foam formulation. The hydroxyamide content and molecular weight of commercial polyol had significant effect on the micro structure as observed by optical microscopy.