Curing kinetics of bio‐based epoxy resin based on epoxidized soybean oil and green curing agent

New thermoset with a high bio‐based content was synthesized by curing epoxidized soybean oil (ESO) with a green curing agent maleopimaric acid catalyzed by 2‐ethly‐4‐methylimidazole. Non‐isothermal differential scanning calorimetry and a relatively new integral isoconversional method were used to analyze the curing kinetic behaviors and determine the activation energy (E a ). The two‐parameter Šesták–Berggren autocatalytic model was applied in the mathematical modeling to obtain the reaction orders and the pro‐exponential factor. For anhydride/epoxy group molar ratio equal to 0.7, E a decreased from 82.70 to 80.17 kJ/mol when increasing the amount of catalyst from 0.5 to 1.5 phr toward ESO. The reaction orders m and n were 0.4148 and 1.109, respectively. The predicted non‐isothermal curing rates of Šesták–Berggren model matched perfectly with the experimental data. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J , 63: 147–153, 2017