CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION 1.1 Preamble Recent global surge in the quest for renewable natural resources of plant origin stems largely from their suitability and sustainability as chemical feedstock, as a result of the economic and environmental-safety advantages they have over petroleum-based feedstock. These advantages include widespread availability, low cost, non-toxicity, low emission properties and biodegradability (Sherman, 2007; Gupta et al., 2010; Petrovic and Cvetkovic, 2012). On the other hand, the use of fossilised carbon-based materials such as coal and petrol in the synthesis of polymeric materials and other products of the chemical industry has resulted in the gradual depletion of these reserves; increased emission of greenhouse gases and accumulation of non-biodegradable waste on earth, among other environmental impacts (Lochab et al., 2012). Current sustainability research drive therefore is towards developing green source materials as potential replacements for petroleum-based feedstock. Vegetable oils definitely represent an important group of agricultural stock for this purpose. Within this group, soybean oil, castor oil, palm oil and canola oil are the most promising vegetable oils for the industrial development of bio-based materials (Husic et al., 2005; Luo et al., 2008; Jose et al; 2008). In terms of availability though, soybean, palm, rapeseed and sunflower oils are the most abundant (Zhang et al., 2007; Genova et al., 2008; Prociak, 2008). However, the use of non-edible vegetable oil like castor oil towards realising this goal obviously has other advantages related to food security. Moreover, world consumption of edible vegetable oils from 1995/1996 – 2014/2015, for 2 instance, has been on a steady rise, reaching 173.27 million metric tons in 2014/2015 (Fig.1.1) (Statistica, 2015). Focus, therefore, ought to be more on the exploitation of the non-edible stock (such as castor and jatropha oils), while preserving the edible ones mainly for human consumption. Even then, there could still arise the problem of vast land areas needed to cultivate large plantations of the non-edible stock, which could otherwise have been used for the edibles (Mazubert et al., 2013). This work represents a modest contribution, and an added impetus to the growing search for viable and sustainable options for replacing petroleum-based chemical feedstocks from among the more palatable and renewable bioresources of plant origin available. In Nigeria, the polyurethane (PU) foam industry is still stitched in mass importation of petro-polyols for PU foam production. This is costing the country large amounts of foreign exchange needed in other (more essential) sectors. Castor oil, non-edible and with its numerous advantages over other vegetable oils, is focused upon as a potential candidate for this replacement, especially in commercial PU development.

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