INTRODUCTION During the past one hundred years, the industry has employed large quantities of fats and oils. The decline in fats and oils has largely been a result of the substitution of petroleum products for the vegetable oils. Alkyd resin contains a large percentage of fatty acids and has been the predominate binder used in the trade-sales and industry for over 35 years. Petroleum based product usage increased dramatically over the past decade, but it is noted that alkyd resins are still employed in large quantities. A large percentage of the trade sales market has switched to water-borne latex coatings based on petroleum- derived materials. The major reason for this is consumer convenience in clean-up, short dry times and low odor. Vegetables oils are the modifier in an alkyd formulation, e.g., palm oil, palm kernel oil, soybean oil, olive oil, colza oil, sesame oil, wood oil, castor oil, linseed oil. While, for animal oil are such as fish oil, whale oil, beef oil, mutton oil and hoof oil. Natural resins such as rosin, amber and shellac; and the synthetic ones such as phenol resin, carbon resin and melamine resin have also been used in the alkyd formulation. In addition, the naturally occurring oils consist of triglycerides, tri-esters of glycerol and fatty acids. Alkyd resins are polyfunctional oil-modified polyesters, synthesized by reaction of polybasic acid together with mono-functional acid. Kienle was the first person to introduce the term ‘Alkyd’ in 1927 and is derived Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Alkyds Derived From Palm Oil Based Polyester Resin S.F. MOHD MUSTAFA * , S.N. GAN and R. YAHYA Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, 50603, Malaysia *Corresponding author: Fax: +60 3 79568822; Tel: +60 3 79492496; E-mail: shifa414@yahoo.com (Received: 20 February 2013; Accepted: 29 August 2013) AJC-14038 Alkyds that are formulated from an identical chemical composition will exhibit different properties and performance depending on the preparation process. In general, alkyds can be prepared from two processes, i.e., alcoholysis (monoglyceride) or fatty acid. Fatty acid process is chosen in this study as the preparation process of alkyd resin. In this process, it involves a step-by-step addition of material to complete the esterification at 180-250 ºC. In addition, synthesis of alkyd can be carried out without solvent (fusion cook) or with solvent (solvent cook). Nowadays, the concern about emission of volatile organic compounds lead to reduction or elimination of solvents as base of industry materials in order to produce more environmental friendly products. In this project, three different alkyd resins namely alk-45, alk-47 and alk-65 were successfully synthesized under fatty acid process by employing without solvent technique. The prepared resins were characterized by FTIR, NMR, TGA, GPC and DSC instruments. Other physical tests such as acid number, hydroxyl number, moisture content were also performed. Key Words: Alkyds, Alcoholysis, Fatty acid, Fusion cook, Solvent cook, Environmental friendly. from ‘al’ of alcohol and ‘cid’ of acid, where the later ‘Kyd’ employed to give the desired phonics 1-3 . Ever since alkyd resins were first introduced some 35 years ago, they have enjoyed a consistent annual growth, with current production now running well over one-half billion pounds. Today alkyds outrank all other synthetic coating resins in importance, accounting for approximately half of all resins used by the paint industry, which approaches a size of two billion dollars annually in the United States. The alkyd reaction is concerned to be the most versatile resin-forming reaction known. No other resin lends itself to greater internal variation or to more useful modification by physical or chemical blending with other polymers 4 . Alkyd resins are used extensively for synthesis of paint, adhesives, ink and varnish also various coating industries. The common problems for alkyd resins are that they are typically used in diluted form in organic and that some of the alkyd resins such as palm oil-based alkyd resin are not able to air dry due to their low iodine value 5,6 . In order to overcome these problems, the use of alkyd emulsions had been employed by emulsifying the alkyd resins in water 8 and by copolymerizing it with other monomer to enhance their properties or to interesterification with oil to produce a workable resin product 10 . Based on our literature search, there are few reports on the use of palm oil or its derivatives alone in making alkyd resin for coating adhesive application. Some of the research groups have modified palm Asian Journal of Chemistry; Vol. 25, No. 15 (2013), 8737-8740 http://dx.doi.org/10.14233/ajchem.2013.15356