Efficiency of Gold Nano Particles on the Autoxidized Soybean Oil Polymer: Fractionation and Structural Analysis

Polyunsaturated plant oils have gained great interest as monomers to produce biodegradable polymers obtained from renewable resources due to the limited existing sources of petroleum oil and environmental issues. Soybean oil was autoxidized by exposure to atomospheric oxygen at room temperature with or without the presence of gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) 5–41 days. When the autoxidation process was catalyzed with Au NPs, the molecular weight of the oxidized oil was increased in 5 days. In contrast to this, without Au NPs, the oxidized oil was still a fluidized liquid. Autoxidized soybean oil polymer in toluene solution with gold NP showed a surface plasmon resonance at λ max = 540 nm in a UV–VIS spectrometer and a fluorescence emission spectrum at λ max = 450 nm, when it was irradiated at λ max = 390 nm. The higher molecular weight of the polymeric oils was successively fractionated by the extraction from the solvent-non-solvent mixture CHCl 3 /petroleum ether with the volume ratio of 5:15. Three polymeric oils fractions with different molecular weight (ca 1000, 4000, and 40,000 g/mol) were obtained. GC–MS analysis, 1 H-NMR and GPC techniques were used in the structural analysis of the fractionated polymeric oils.