Assess the Possibility to Substituting Crude Oil-based Film Formers in Automotive Epoxy Metal Primers with Coconut oil-derived Bio-based Polyurethane Film Formers

There is a potential risk that diminishing some islands in the world map within a short time period due to global warming unless people divert into new strategies to use crude oil sustainability or replace with renewable resources. Polyurethane (PU) is one of the most popular film-forming materials in the coating industry because of its better performance. A coconut oil-derived biobased polyol (BBP) was synthesized and acid value, viscosity, reaction water release, oil length, FTIR spectrum, differential scanning calorimetry and Lovibond colourimetric index were assessed during the synthesis. A series of pigmented renewable polyurethane metal primer (RPUMP) wet samples were prepared by using BBP under two categories as direct-to-metal (DTM) primers and undercoat primers (UCP) in two mixing ratios with polyisocyanate hardener as 2:1 and 4:1. All samples were comparatively tested with crude oil born commercially available epoxy metal (CAEMP) primers in Sri Lankan market for apparent viscosity, fineness of grinding, solid content, specific gravity, gloss, drying time, hardness, dry film thickness, adhesion, impact resistance, water resistance, salt spray resistance and cylindrical mandrel bending.