Today's KNOWLEDGE Share :MANUFACTURING OF Polyethylene Furanoate (PEF)

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Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

Manufacturing of PEF:

PEF is produced from the two monomers: (mono)ethylene glycol (MEG) and 2,5- furandicarboxylic acid. Both monomers are possible to produce from biomass, meaning that PEF can be 100% biobased. Bio-MEG is commercially available and is the same monomer used also for bio-PET.


PEF synthesis is a stepwise polymerization and can be produced via two routes: polycondensation of MEG with FDCA or transesterification using dimethyl-2,5- furandicarboxylate (DMF) (Guigo, Forestier and Sbirrazzuoli, 2019). The first PEF synthesis was patented already in 1946 (Drewitt and Lincoln, 1947), who used melt polymerization. The transesterification pathway has been studied by e.g., (Khrouf et al., 1998) and is more efficient.







Polymerization to PEF

The polymerization reactions to produce PEF are analogous to PET-polymerization, but with FDCA instead of TPA (Louw, 2024). The reaction temperatures for FDCA and MEG is lower, and the reaction times are somewhat shorter compared to TPA and MEG, which could imply a lower production cost. Polymerization of PEF is performed in two steps, i.e. esterification (into bis(2-hydroxyethyl)-2,5- furandicarboxylate (BHEF)) and polycondensation. Polycondensation is typically conducted in two phases; melt phase polymerization (MPP) followed by solid-state polymerization (SSP) to increase the molecular weight of the polymer. During polycondensation, MEG and water is continuously released and removed using vacuum.


A summary of syntheses based on FDCA and thermal properties of a variety of furanoate-based polyesters, including PEF were reported by (Papageorgiou et al., 2016). The paper covers different melt polycondensation methods as well as solution methods, and apart from PEF, other polyesters, such as poly(propylene 2,5- furandicarboxylate) (PPF), poly(butylene 2,5-furandicarboxylate) (PBF) and poly(hexylene 2,5-furandicarboxylate) (PHF) are described and considered as viable candidates for the next generation of novel bio-based coatings, toners, binders, glues, bottles and wrapping materials. In a study by Stanley et al. comparison of using FDCA versus the derivative dimethyl 2,5-furan dicarboxylate (DMFD) for producing PEF showed that FDCA was more effective in generating PEF of high molecular weight. As an alternative to polycondensation, ring-opening polymerisation (ROP) has also been proposed to avoid potential degradation and discoloration reactions and long reaction times (Rosenboom et al., 2018). The ROP process starts from cyclic PEF oligomers and by initiation in the presence of a high boiling and inert liquid plasticiser, the self-plasticising effect of the forming polymer can be exploited to form PEF with high molecular weight.


ROP has shown to deliver bottle-grade PEF in relatively short reaction times and a preliminary comparison of the energy requirements shows that ROP resulted in similar values as polycondensation .


source:Chalmers Industriteknik


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