`Used Cooking Oil Finds New Life in Innovative Materials for Cars, Homes - Olive Oil Times
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Used Cooking Oil Finds New Life in Innovative Materials for Cars, Homes

By Ylenia Granitto
Apr. 14, 2026 14:55 UTC
Summary Summary

Used cook­ing oil can be repur­posed into inno­v­a­tive mate­ri­als for the auto­mo­tive and con­struc­tion sec­tors, such as polyurethane foams and bio-lubri­cants, accord­ing to a study coor­di­nated by the University of Pisa. The research, part of the MOST Sustainable Mobility National Center, focused on devel­op­ing flex­i­ble foams and phase-change mate­ri­als from waste cook­ing oil, demon­strat­ing the poten­tial to reduce reliance on fos­sil resources and strengthen tech­no­log­i­cal auton­omy in the face of global chal­lenges.

Used cook­ing oil can be trans­formed into inno­v­a­tive mate­ri­als for the auto­mo­tive and con­struc­tion sec­tors, includ­ing polyurethane foams, phase-change mate­ri­als capa­ble of absorb­ing, stor­ing and releas­ing heat, and bio-lubri­cants for indus­trial hydraulic sys­tems.

That is the find­ing of a study coor­di­nated by the University of Pisa within the MOST Sustainable Mobility National Center, funded under Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Led by Maurizia Seggiani of the university’s Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, the work was devel­oped במסגרת Spoke 11, a pro­gram focused on sus­tain­able, inno­v­a­tive mate­ri­als and light­weight solu­tions.

“Basically, we used this waste – used cook­ing oil – as a pre­cur­sor for poly­ols,” Seggiani told Olive Oil Times. ​“Polyols are one of the two main com­po­nents of polyurethane foams, along­side iso­cyanates.”

She explained that the used cook­ing oil was sub­jected to chem­i­cal treat­ments to obtain poly­ols. The mix­ture of waste cook­ing oils con­sists of triglyc­erides whose fatty acid chains con­tain dou­ble bonds, mak­ing them unsat­u­rated. This made it pos­si­ble to exploit those dou­ble bonds to func­tion­al­ize the chains with hydroxyl groups, which then react with iso­cyanates to form ure­thane bonds, giv­ing the foams their char­ac­ter­is­tic retic­u­lar struc­ture.

By adding suit­able addi­tives, includ­ing cat­a­lysts, sur­fac­tants and foam­ing agents in small quan­ti­ties, researchers cre­ated open-cell struc­tures that give polyurethane foams their flex­i­bil­ity.

“With this research, we aimed to develop flex­i­ble foams for use in the auto­mo­tive indus­try, but we can also pro­duce closed-cell foams to be used as insu­lat­ing pan­els in the con­struc­tion sec­tor,” Seggiani said.

The used cook­ing oil was also repur­posed for other appli­ca­tions. In par­tic­u­lar, the derived poly­ols were tested as bio-lubri­cants to pro­vide an alter­na­tive to con­ven­tional petro­leum-based lubri­cants.

Professor Maurizia Seggiani, of the University of Pisa’s Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, led the NRRP MOST‑funded research that developed innovative materials from waste cookin oils.

“In this case, the poly­ols under­went the stan­dard tests used to val­i­date lubri­cants, such as rhe­o­log­i­cal and tri­bo­log­i­cal analy­ses, fric­tion coef­fi­cient mea­sure­ments and vis­cos­ity index eval­u­a­tion, to assess how their vis­cos­ity changes with tem­per­a­ture,” Seggiani said. ​“Some of these poly­ols suc­cess­fully passed the tests and there­fore show poten­tial as bio-lubri­cants for tight­en­ing oper­a­tions car­ried out at room tem­per­a­ture. So far, they have been tested specif­i­cally for this type of appli­ca­tion.”

Another part of the research, con­ducted in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Maria Michela Dell’Anna of the Polytechnic University of Bari, focused on devel­op­ing phase-change mate­ri­als through a hydro­gena­tion process.

“These mate­ri­als undergo phase changes, from liq­uid to solid and back again, at tem­per­a­tures between 30 and 35°C,” Seggiani said. ​“This allows them to be incor­po­rated into polyurethane pan­els, giv­ing them the abil­ity to absorb, store and release heat in response to tem­per­a­ture changes. These pan­els can be used in vehi­cles or inte­grated into build­ing walls. This is one of sev­eral strate­gies to improve energy effi­ciency, reduc­ing the energy required to heat or cool indoor envi­ron­ments.”

Damiano Rossi, of the University of Pisa’s Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, during laboratory activities for the research that turned waste cooking oil into innovative materials.

The waste cook­ing oil used in the research was sup­plied by Physis Srl, a Tuscany-based com­pany that col­lects it from large retail chains and cater­ing facil­i­ties. Analyses car­ried out dur­ing the study showed that the oil con­tained about 45 per­cent oleic acid by weight, indi­cat­ing a sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence of vir­gin and extra vir­gin olive oils.

“The oil we used was col­lected in Tuscany, where extra vir­gin olive oil is widely used, even for fry­ing,” Seggiani noted. ​“The com­po­si­tion of the oil mix can vary depend­ing on the region where it is col­lected.”

Seggiani said there is exten­sive lit­er­a­ture on the use of vir­gin oils, such as soy­bean and cas­tor oil, to pro­duce poly­ols for polyurethane foams. Because their com­po­si­tions are known in advance, includ­ing the per­cent­age of dou­ble bonds avail­able for func­tion­al­iza­tion, they allow for more stan­dard­ized pro­duc­tion processes.

“Working with mix­tures of used oils intro­duces addi­tional com­plex­ity because the degree of unsat­u­ra­tion varies from batch to batch, requir­ing the addi­tives to be recal­i­brated each time,” she said. ​“Nevertheless, this is the more sus­tain­able approach, since using vir­gin oils com­petes with food pro­duc­tion and land use, and we can­not divert edi­ble resources to pro­duce indus­trial mate­ri­als.”

Tests conducted by researchers at the University of Pisa showed that polyols derived by waste cooking can function as bio-lubricants, offering a viable alternative to conventional petroleum-based formulations.

Seggiani said that while an effec­tive col­lec­tion sys­tem exists for large-scale facil­i­ties, house­hold waste oil still lacks one, despite the poten­tial ben­e­fits.

“The com­pany from which we sourced the waste cook­ing oil, Physis, col­lects it from large retail chains and can­teens that can guar­an­tee a steady sup­ply,” she said. ​“In Italy and across Europe, only a small frac­tion of house­hold waste cook­ing oil is col­lected. Estimates sug­gest that between 0.6 and 1 mil­lion tons are col­lected annu­ally in Europe, com­pared to a poten­tial of around 4 mil­lion tons. Much of what is col­lected is cur­rently used for biodiesel pro­duc­tion. We hope that devel­op­ing alter­na­tive appli­ca­tions for this waste, as demon­strated in our research, will help encour­age a more effec­tive col­lec­tion of house­hold used cook­ing oil.”

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Seggiani empha­sized that the key value of the research lies in trans­form­ing a waste mate­r­ial des­tined for dis­posal into durable, high-value prod­ucts, bring­ing addi­tional envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits.

“In an unsta­ble geopo­lit­i­cal land­scape, where access to energy and chem­i­cal raw mate­ri­als is increas­ingly sub­ject to ten­sions and strate­gic depen­den­cies, invest­ing in alter­na­tives to fos­sil-derived oil is not only an envi­ron­men­tal choice, but also an indus­trial and polit­i­cal one,” she said. ​“Research must antic­i­pate these changes by devel­op­ing com­ple­men­tary solu­tions that reduce the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of sup­ply chains. In this con­text, val­oriz­ing a local waste prod­uct such as used cook­ing oil rep­re­sents one pos­si­ble strat­egy to reduce reliance on fos­sil resources. Turning it into high-value mate­ri­als means strength­en­ing tech­no­log­i­cal auton­omy, diver­si­fy­ing sources and build­ing more resilient pro­duc­tion sys­tems capa­ble of address­ing future global chal­lenges.”

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