Preparation and characterization of polymeric dispersants based on vegetable oils for printing ink application

In this work, a novel vegetable oil-based polymers were prepared by epoxidation of soybean oil (SBO) and castor oil (CO) followed by ring opening reaction of epoxidized oil with polyether amine and poly propylene glycol. The prepared polymers were characterized by FTIR and GPC. The properties of vegetable oils and epoxidized vegetable oil (EVO) were studied. The prepared polymers were employed as novel polymeric dispersants for pigment dispersion in solvent based printing ink application. The mechanical and optical properties of prepared ink were studied. The net technical properties of the new ink formulations are relatively comparable to the prepared printing ink from standard polymeric dispersant. The polymeric dispersant 2 (PD2) and polymeric dispersant 4 (PD4) gave the best optical and mechanical properties among the prepared polymers.