Polymers and surfactants on the basis of renewable resources

A new strategy for the preparation of different polymers and special surfactants was developed. First, unsaturated fatty acid methyl esters obtained from plant oils were converted to terminally unsaturated esters and α-olefins by metathesis with ethylene using heterogeneous rhenium or homogeneous ruthenium catalysts. These esters were directly copolymerized with ethylene by an insertion-type palladium-catalyzed polymerization to functionalized polyolefins. Polyesters were synthesized by metathetical dimerization of ω-unsaturated esters and subsequent polycondensation of the produced internally unsaturated dicarboxylic esters or by acidic transesterification with petrochemical diols and additional acyclic diene metathesis polymerization. ω-epoxy fatty acid methyl esters, achieved by a new method of chemo-enzymatic epoxidation, were converted into polyethers with comb-structure catalyzed by aluminoxanes on the one hand and into sugar surfactants by nucleophilic ring-opening with amino carbohydrates on the other hand.