Chemical studies on Tanzanian cashew-nut shell liquid

Spiralling prices and high rate of depletion of the stocks for manufacture of polymers necessitates a look at the renewable natural resource that can serve as alternative feedstocks of monomers for the polymer industry. Cashewnut shell liquid (CNSL), an abundant agricultural by-product in this respect, holds a bright promise as a source of unsaturated phenol, an excellent monomer for production of polymers.This dissertation therefore describes chemical and physical properties of CNSL through several methods in extraction, isolation and hydrogenation. CNSL of natural and industrial origins from coastal regions of Tanzania were investigated by analytical and instrumental methods utilising glc, hplc, uv/ir and nmr and comparable results obtained and discussed. Extracted materials from different sources were present from 23.6% to 27.7%. After hydrogenation of the C15 side chains and derivatization of the acidic groups, the component phenols anacardic acid (74.1% to 77.4%) , cardol (15.0% to 20.1%) , 2-methyl cardol (1.7% to 2.6%) and cardanol (1.2% to 8.2%) were determined using gravimetric methods and gas chromatography using non-polar column SE-30 on silanised support. Quantitative analysis of different types of technical CNSL and percentage composition of the constituents of cardanol and cardol have been carried out and established that the major components had the following, cardanol triene (23.5% - 33.3%), Cardanol diene (12.3%16.0%), cardanol monoene (19.4% - 30.0%), cardanol saturated (3.1% - 3.7%) while cardol triene had (6.6% - 13.6%}, cardol diene (2.4% - 3.5%} and cardol monoene (1.0 - 1.2%).