Controlled synthesis of CO₂-diol from renewable starter by reducing acid value through preactivation approach

Abstract

Synthesis of polyols from carbon dioxide (CO₂) is attractive from the viewpoint of sustainable development of polyurethane industry; it is also interesting to adjust the structure of the CO₂-polyols for versatile requirement of polyurethane. However, when renewable malonic acid was used as a starter, the copolymerization reaction of CO₂ and propylene oxide (PO) was uncontrollable, since it proceeded slowly (13 h) and produced 40.4 wt% of byproduct propylene carbonate (PC) with a low productivity of 0.34 kg/g. A careful analysis disclosed that the acid value of the copolymerization medium was the key factor for controlling the copolymerization reaction. Therefore, a preactivation approach was developed to dramatically reduce the acid value to ~0.6 mg(KOH)/g by homopolymerization of PO into oligo-ether-diol under the initiation of malonic acid, which ensured the controllable copolymerization, where the copolymerization time could be shortened by 77% from 13 to 3 h, the PC content was reduced by 76% from 40.4 wt% to 9.4 wt%, and the productivity increased by 61% from 0.34 to 0.55 kg/g. Moreover, by means of preactivation approach, the molecular weight as well as the carbonate unit content in the CO₂-diol was also controllable.