Organic Raw Materials

1. Chemistry and application

Bisphenol S (BPS, CAS 80-09-1) consists of two hydroxyphenyl groups connected by a sulfonyl group and has the chemical formula C12H10O4S (Figure 1). BPS has a listed production volume between 1 000 and 10 000 tons per year according to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA 2014). It is used as monomer in synthetic polymers such as polyethersulfone (PES) and polysulfone (PSU) as well as in epoxy resins also used for food contact (Lotti et al 2013, Lotti et al 2011, Liaw 1998 and Gao and Li 2000).

PES has replaced bisphenol A (BPA) based polycarbonates in plastic baby bottles (Simoneau et al 2011). BPA based epoxy resins in cans have been substituted with BPS (Viñas et al 2010). Further, BPS is used in thermal papers (Liao et al 2012) and it has been detected in recycled food carton and food packaging paper (Liao et al 2012).