ENGINEERING NEW, BIOBASED FIRE-RETARDANT COATING ADDITIVES FROM AGRICULTURAL BYPRODUCTS

Overarching goals of the project are: (1) advancement or expansion of utilization of waste and byproducts generated in agricultural and food systems, and (2) engineering of new and improved products and strategies that make use of materials from agricultural origin. The major goals of this project is to evaluate the feasibility of developing an engineered, high-efficiency, intumescent fire-retardant (FR) coating additive from agricultural byproducts. At molecular level, these additives will be produced from phytic acid (PA) complexed with a polyhydroxylated hyperbranched polymer, polyglycerol (hPG). While the primary source of hPG will be the crude glycerol generated from biodiesel industry, PA can be sourced from cereal crop residue, such as bran. Core hydroxyl groups of hPGs will be chemically converted to amine functional groups, thereby forming core-cationized hPG (hPG+) that will bind to PA to form the intumescent FR-complexes. A facile, one-step manufacturing process will be used to cross-link hPG+-PA complexes in the form of nanoscale polymeric aggregates or nanogels, with particle size ranging between 100-150 nm. This polyglycerol-based FR-nanogels can be directly added to water- or solvent-borne coating systems, thereby providing the system with superior intumescent FR-properties without affecting the coating quality. The specific goals of this projects are: (1) Molecular engineering of glycerol to form hyperbranched polyglycerol (2) Optimize the FR-additive for direct incorporation into resins (3) Analysis of the coating properties of FR-additive-infused coatings, and (4) Evaluation of intumescent FR properties of the final product.