Polysulfides from the catalystic inverse vulcanization of epoxides and reneweable monomers

Reduction of fossil fuel consumption and shift towards renewable feedstock are among the goals of a sustainable development and, in particular, the reuse of industrial wastes as starting materials can help to minimize the impact of productive activity on environment. In the last few years the strong an interest in exploring the use of sulfur as a low cost starting material for the synthesis of sulfur rich-polymers has emerged with the purpose to valorize the large volumes of elemental sulfur derived from oil industry are stored unused, causing the global "excess sulfur problem". [1,2] Here, the catalytic inverse vulcanization of low cost monomers, including monomers coming from renewable sources or by-products and waste to obtain sustainable materials is reported. Epoxides such as limonene oxide (LO), epoxidated soybean oil (ESbO), and vinyl cyclohexene oxide (VCHO) and dipentene (DIP) and grape seed oil (GsO) have been explored as monomers.