The Anhydride-Amic Acid-Imide Forms of Maleinized Soybean Oil

Vegetable oil is one of the most promising renewable feedstocks as an alternative to fossil resources,but there are few studies aiming to transform it into hydrophilic materials.We proposed a facile method to prepare water-soluble derivatives from soybean oil,which could become water resistant again after simple heat treatment.The model vegetable oil,soybean oil(SO),was first reacted with maleic anhydride(MA)by the Alder ene reaction to obtain maleinized soybean oil(SOMA),and SOMA was further reacted with gaseous ammonia to obtain the maleamic acid form(SOMA-Amic acid),which was very soluble in water(solubility>100 mg/mL).The obtained water-soluble product was converted to the water-resistant maleimide form(SOMA-Imide)by a simple heat treatment.The potential application of these vegetable oil derived materials was demonstrated in paper sizing as an example.SOMA-Amic acid was demonstrated to be a novel green material,which can be used in an aqueous process and then heat-treated to become water-resistant in the final product.