Recent Advances in Epoxidation of Vegetable oils

Vegetable oils are among the most promising renewable raw materials because of their ready availability, inherent biodegradability, and their many versatile applications. Vegetable oils are the fats and lipids containing triglyceride molecules. Due to the increase in environmental issues like waste disposal problems, non-biodegradable resources, greenhouse effect, etc. and the reduction of petroleum oil resources, renewable oils from vegetable origin have become an important issue. The lubricants from renewable resources are a successful reality in many parts of the world. Vegetable oils have many advantages such as high flash point, high viscosity index, high lubricity and low evaporative loss besides Eco-compatible, renewability and non-toxicity. This paper reviews the methods that are recently been practiced for the epoxidation of vegetable oils.