Driven by the industrial application needs and the desire to improve sustainability, my

studies have focused on developing vegetable oil-based wax and binder alternatives to

replace petroleum-based wax and animal product-based bird seed binder, and to improve the

availability of natural waxes having desired properties but limited availability. A variety of

soybean oil-based wax ester and amide derivatives were synthesized as potential paraffin and

carnauba wax replacers, and a vegetable oil-based adhesive material was developed as an

alternative to the gelatin-based bird seed binder. Some of the compounds showed physical

properties such as hardness, cohesiveness and melting point, very comparable to paraffin and

carnauba wax. The soybean oil-based binder was promising in providing seed cakes with

good strength under different environmental conditions. The structure-function relationships

of vegetable oil-based waxes were investigated and established. A work focusing on

developing an environmental friendly solvent extraction system for the recovery of poly-β-

hydroxybutyrate (PHB), a high-value biopolymer, was also included. The novel and solvent

system was proven to be effective for extracting PHB from bacterial cells.