Revalorization of Grape Seed Oil for Innovative Non-Food Applications

Grape processing produces a substantial amount of residues that are highly polluting and expensive to treat, being grape seed one of the main by-products with high commercial interest. During the extraction process of grape seed oil, most of the nutraceutical compounds remain on the solid cake. This book chapter resumes the potential utilization of grape seed oil for producing biobased materials through environmentally friendly processes that could substitute petroleum-derived products. Special attention is given to transesterification and epoxidation processes. The transesterification of grape seed oil in presence of methanol drives to the production of a biodiesel with excellent low-temperature properties. According to EN 14214, grape seed oil-based biodiesel presents a slightly lower cetane number than the specified limit. In addition, this biodiesel presents a low oxidation stability which can be improved by the incorporation of oxidation stabilizer. Attending to the epoxidation of grape seed oil, short reaction times and high temperatures are advised. Epoxidized grape seed oil can be used for the synthesis of biobased polyols and its further application on the synthesis of polyurethane compounds.