Fats and oils as oleochemical raw materials *

Vegetable oils and fats are important constituents of human and animal foodstuffs. Certain grades are industrially used and, together with carbohydrates and proteins, are important renewable resources compared to fossil and mineral raw materials, whose occurrence is finite. In concepts for new products, the price, performance, and product safety criteria are equally important and have a correspondingly high importance right at the start of product development. To ensure a high degree of product safety for consumers and the environment, renewable resources have often been shown to have advantages when compared with petrochemical raw materials and can therefore be regarded as being the ideal raw material basis. Results from oleochemistry show that the use of vegetable fats and oils allows the development of competitive, powerful products, which are both consumer-friendly and environment-friendly. Recently developed products, which fit this requirement profile, are the anionic surfactants cocomonoglyceride sulfate and the nonionic sugar surfactant alkyl polyglycoside. These products are used especially as mild surfactants in cosmetic formulations. In polymer applications derivatives of oils and fats, such as epoxides, polyols, and dimerizations products based on unsaturated fatty acids, are used as plastic additives or components for composites or polymers like polyamides and polyurethanes. In the lubricant sector fatty acidbased esters have proven to be powerful alternatives to conventional mineral oil products. RAW MATERIAL SITUATION [1,2] The sources of oils and fats are various vegetable and animal raw materials (e.g., tallow, lard) with the vegetable raw materials soybean, palm, rapeseed and sunflower oil being the most important ones regarding the amounts involved (Fig. 1). Of the approximately 101 million tonnes of fats and oils which were produced worldwide in 1998, by far the largest share was used in human foodstuffs. For oleochemistry, 14 million tonnes were available. In recent years, the amounts produced have continuously increased by approximately 3% per year. It is predicted that this trend will continue in the medium and long terms. The composition of the fatty acids contained in the oil (fatty acid spectrum) determines the further use of the oils. Special attention must be given to coconut oil and palm kernel oil (lauric oils) because of their high share of fatty acids with a short or medium chain length (mainly 12 and 14 carbon atoms: C12, C14). For example, these are particularly suitable for further processing to surfactants for washing and cleansing agents as well as cosmetics. Palm, soybean, rapeseed, and sunflower oil, as well as animal fats such as tallow, contain mainly long-chain fatty acids (e.g., C18, saturated and unsaturated) and are used as raw materials for polymer applications and lubricants (Fig. 2) [3,4]. Based on results from cycle analyses and ecological and toxicological studies for selected cases one can assume that products based on renewable resources usually are better ecologically compatible when compared with petrochemical-based substances—an important criterion in the development of a new product, just as price and performance are [5,6].