Radiation Technology For Palm Oil-Based Nanoparticles by Rida Tajau & Rosiah Rohani

Palm oil products, namely acrylated palm olein (APO) and polyol ester were used as raw materials to synthesise nano-sized copolymers. Copolymer nanoparticles were developed using the RAFT polymerisation technique, where a gan radiation source became a tool to initiate radicals in the aqueous media. Dibenzyl trithiocarbonate acted as a RAFT agent throughout the reaction processes (e.g. initiation, propagation and termination) to ensure the RAFT polymerisation happened between the initiated radicals and monomers. Integration of the radiation-induced RAFT polymerisation approach was performed at room temperature, which aqueous media in absent of catalyst was applied during the reaction. The synthesised product was named as poly(acrylated palm olein-b polyol ester) nanoparticles or called by poly(APO-b-polyol ester) nanoparticles.