Sustainable and scale-able soybean based technology for improving performance of materials by structure design
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Date
2023-05
Authors
Hohmann, Austin D
Major Professor
Advisor
Cochran, Eric W
Hebert, Kurt R
Kraus, George A
Wang, Qun
Williams, Ronald C
Committee Member
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Abstract
This work studies soybean-based technology in aims to reduce petroleum dependency. This work primarily focused on designing greener technology that is plug-and-play substitutes to petrol materials. This work focuses on three areas: The first area looked at rejuvenation, which was broken into two sections where the rejuvenation of brittle binders was quantified by measuring the particle size change of the oxidized molecules and the effects the rejuvenation have on the asphalt mix performance. This allow for the asphalt industry to quantify how rejuvenation can occur and how to measure rejuvenator efficacy. This is pivotal as optimizing recycle asphalt pavement is paramount in the paving industry. This work set the stage for the second section where soybean oil was control radical polymerized (CRF) (via. RAFT - Reversible Addition Fragmentation Chain Transfer) into a thermoplastic known as Biomag. This work uniquely found (during commercialization) Biomag to possess a suppression of gelation while being in the turbulent domain. This one-pot Biomag was then used in asphalt modification to not only promote recycled asphalt pavement usage, but also enhance the SBS network in polymer modified asphalt. Biomag was further utilized due to the plethora of moieties present to reactively extrude PLA and form a fully compostable impact toughing agent. Biomag was produced with two different types of acrylic to understand how the solubility of the primary chain affects the crack propagation. The methacrylic backbone was found to be superior in it's performance. The culmination of this work focused on further understanding the unique architecture of soybean-based material and how to promote a more sustainable world.
Finally, I have one ongoing project that we are currently working on. This project looks at reactively extruding Biomag with styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS) block copolymers to provide a pelletized form of Biomag. This work is focusing on providing the asphalt industry with a readily dissolvable pellet at mix plants. This will disrupt the status quo of the paving industry and allow mix plants to polymer modify on demand.
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dissertation