Study of the properties of an epoxy adhesive with additions of a residue from the biodiesel production process

Abstract In order to increase fuel supplies and reduce the gaseous emissions responsible for global warming, the production of biofuels has been stimulated. However, Biodiesel production leads to a huge amount of residues. The inappropriate discard of these residues generates an environmental problem. An important co-product of the transesterification process for biodiesel production is glycerol (also known as glycerin), representing 10% of the processed mass. Therefore, there are studies being carried out for the proper destination of glycerol. From these studies, one application of glycerol that deserves special attention is in the production of polymers. In this sense, this work studies the possibility of incorporating crude glycerol in epoxy adhesives, where fractions of 1.0%, 2.5%, 5.0% and 10.0% were added into epoxy. The tests carried out were tensile tests, adhesion tests and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), in order to evaluate the mechanical, adhesives and thermal behavior of the epoxy with these additions. In conclusion, small fractions of glycerol, like 1.0%, showed satisfactory results, in general, not decreased in adhesive properties; in opposite it leads to a small improvement with need more studies. With 2.5% and 5.0% of addition, more investigation is advisable. However, it was observed indications of improvement in properties, although less than those obtained with 1.0%. With 10.0% of addition there were sharp deterioration of properties, showing that use with 10.0% is not recommendable.