Study On The Preparation And Characterization Vegetable Oil-based Foamed Materials

In this paper, the vegetable oils were functionalized with soybean oil, castor oil and tung oil as the raw materials. Its epoxides, acrylated and maleinized products were prepared. The cross-linking & curing reaction of the functionalized vegetable oils were realized in the presence of initiator G and catalyst BC. The novel type of vegetable oil-based growing media and foaming materials were prepared with or without the addition of filler. The influences of the dosage of initiator G, catalyst BC and CaC0₃ on the physical and chemical properties of foaming materials were studied by FTIR, SEM, MTS and various chemical techniques. The appearance and physical & chemical properties of growing media were studied as adjusting the amount and type of filler, oil system, foaming system, initiator G, catalyst BC and curing time.By means of the all study mentioned above, it could be given three foaming system with lower decomposing temperature. The vegetable oil-based foaming material could be prepared with the aid of the initiator G for the AESO system and catalyst BC for the ECO & MT system, and AC is 30% of oil system, curing temperature is 185°C for the both foaming system. For the foaming system based on free radical curing: the density and compression stress of foaming materials increased with increasing in content of initiator G. For the foaming system based on foaming system 2, the cells were more even and open mostly, and cell size became less and more even with increasing in content of initiator G. For the condensation curing foaming system: the density increased with increasing in content of catalyst BC, the compression stress of foaming materials increased with the addition of CaC0₃, cell size became less too.Three better formulations were obtained through the investigating of the growing media by the orthogonal layout. The growing media prepared by the formulations were used to plant cucumber & balsamine and observe the growth of them. It could be given the best formulation for the growing media:organic-inorganic filler system is a mixture of bagasse, perlite, humus, lignite and sand, the humus volume is 20% of all fillers'. The total amount of filler is moderate in its dosage, oil system is (ECO+MT)/AESO=2/1, the dosage of foaming system 2 is 5% of the total oil, the curing temperature is 185°C and time is 30min.