Industrial Crops and Products 34 (2011) 900–906 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Industrial Crops and Products jo ur nal homep age: www.elsevier.com/locate/indcrop Green composites from maleated castor oil and jute fibres Ershad Mistri a , Soumen Routh b , Dipa Ray b,∗ , Saswata Sahoo c , Manjusri Misra d a School of Materials Science and Engineering, Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur, Howrah 711103, India b Department of Polymer Science & Technology, University of Calcutta, 92 A.P. C Road, Kolkata 700009, India c Bioproducts Discovery and Development Centre, Department of Plant Agriculture, Crop Science Building, University of Guelph, Guelph, N1G2W1, ON, Canada d School of Engineering, Thornbrough Building, University of Guelph, Guelph, N1G2W1, ON, Canada a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 27 October 2010 Received in revised form 10 February 2011 Accepted 17 February 2011 Available online 24 March 2011 Keywords: Castor oil Maleic anhydride Impact strength Damping property a b s t r a c t Castor oil was converted to maleated castor oil (MACO) without any catalyst. MACO was characterized with FTIR, NMR, molecular weight and viscosity measurement. Tung oil (20 wt%) was added to MACO as reactive diluent. Non-woven jute felts were used as reinforcing material. The MACO was polymerized and crosslinked in situ during composite fabrication. The curing behavior of MACO with free radical catalyst was investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The MACO/jute composites were tested for their flexural properties, impact strength and dynamic mechanical properties and compared with similar unsaturated polyester resin/jute composites. The flexural moduli of both the composites were nearly similar. The impact strength of MACO/jute composites was 42% higher than that of UPE/jute composites. The damping property of the MACO/jute composites was higher than that of UPE/jute composites over a wide range of temperature. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Polymers and polymer based composite materials are derived from petroleum reserves. Now, as the number of applications of polymeric materials continue to increase, an alternative source of these materials becomes more important. Recently, the use of renewable resources has attracted the attention of many researchers because of their potential to substitute petrochem- ical derivatives (Carraher and Sperling, 1983). Plant oils, which are predominantly made up of triglyceride molecules, are ideal replacement material to manufacture bio-based polymeric matrix as they are renewable, offer comparable performance and of low cost when compared with petroleum-based polymer matri- ces. These materials have also environmental advantages over petroleum-based materials, making them an attractive alternative. Non-edible oil such as castor oil is an excellent source of natu- rally occurring hydrocarbons which are biologically degradable (bio hydrocarbons). Environmentally degradable polymeric materials can be developed by varying structure and composition. Castor oil, a macro tri-ol, can generate high polymers with limited crosslink density imparting high toughness to the material. Castor oil, in particular, has received much attention, primarily because of its status as a large-scale commercial product (Sperling et al., 1991, 1984). Castor oil is unique in that it possesses both unsaturation and nonconjugated hydroxyl function. Due to its ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 033 2350 1397; fax: +91 033 2351 9755. E-mail address: roy.dipa@gmail.com (D. Ray). unusual structure, this oil is very versatile in its applications (Cassidy and Schwank, 1974). Castor oil was subjected to many familiar organic reactions to form useful derivatives which can undergo radical or conden- sation polymerization reactions. A recent work reported (Mitha and Jayabalan, 2009) the synthesis of biodegradable and crosslink- able poly(castor oil fumarate)/poly(propylene fumarate) composite adhesive as a potential injectable and in situ cross linkable polyester resins for orthopedic applications. In another study, researchers (Wang et al., 2008a,b) prepared biodegradable foam plastics based on castor oil. They reacted castor oil with maleic anhydride to produce maleated castor oil (MACO). Then plastic foams were syn- thesized through free radical initiated copolymerization between MACO and diluent monomer styrene. Ferreira and co-workers (Ferreira et al., 2007) developed and characterized biodegradable urethane/castor oil (CO) based bioadhesive by reaction of the cas- tor oil molecule with isophorone diisocyanate. Aliphatic–aromatic polyamides of castor oil based dimer acid (DA) with various aro- matic diamines using triphenylphosphite as condensation reagent was reported by Bajpai and Khare (2004). Can et al. (2006) studied mechanical properties of soybean and castor oil based thermoset- ting polymers. They prepared maleic anhydride modified soybean and castor oil based monomers via the malination of the alcoholy- sis products of the oils with various polyols. The polymers prepared from castor oil exhibited significantly improved modulus, strength, and glass transition temperature when compared with soybean- oil-based polymers. In our work, castor oil was first converted to maleated castor oil (MACO) by reaction with maleic anhydride without aid of any 0926-6690/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.indcrop.2011.02.008