Fabrication of biosourced resins

The goal of this project consists in the fabrication of biosources resins for the market of joint-seal membranes and technical coatings. Epoxy resins are commodity products that are nowadays issued from the petroleum industry. Moreover, during their fabrication, chemicals that are harmful to the environment or the human health, such as epichlorhydrin or bisphenol A, must be manipulated in large quanitities. In our projet, we are going to use terpenes which are abundant natural compounds in order to prepare these resins. Most specifically, we will be interested in limonene which is present in large amount in orange peels. Moreover, we will be interested in terpenes which are indigeneous to Quebec, such as pinenes. This project will consist in the transformation of such terpenes in biosourced resins, notably using two steps: a) epoxidation of terpenes on a large scale and b) resin formulation and fabrication. With such resins in hand, it would become to significantly lower our carbon footprint, to protect the environment by lowering the use of bisphenol A and to lower the use of a highly toxic product, epichlorhydrin. This project is a collaboration between a company specialized in the fabrication of membranes, Soprema, and two senior researchers, Serge Kaliaguine from Universtié Laval, specialist in catalysis and Jerome Claverie from Université de Sherbrooke, specialist in polymer chemistry.