Green Composites from Natural Resources

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16

Vegetable Oils for

Green Composites

Vijay K. Thakur, Mahendra Thunga,

and Michael R. Kessler

16.1 INTRODUCTION

Rising concerns about the future availability of energy resources and increased

environmental awareness have led to the utilization of renewable materials in a num-

ber of applications (Alawar et al. 2009; Abdelmouleh et al. 2004; Cai et al. 2012;

Demirbas 2009; Duwensee et al. 2010). In fact, the industrial exploitation of valu-

able feedstocks that can be easily obtained from renewable resources is currently

the focus of considerable research efforts (Huber et al. 2006; Zhang et al. 2012). For

example, renewable materials such as ...