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Plastics March 11, 2011

Posted by Searchable Content in Content, Dressing and packaging, EN, The Chemistry of Making.
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Think fast! What is what? It can be transparent or colored, soft or tough and take on different forms?

It has many applications and meet in our day-to-day since I woke up to the time of going to bed?

This is when we brush our teeth, watch TV, put a tennis court, walk to the car, playing ball and even fry an egg?

Still not found? So I’ll give you a hint, the answer to the riddle is the theme of our program today, the plastic!

The use of plastic is much greater than we imagine.

His qualities guarantee him a lot of applications. Being transparent, it can be used in eyeglasses, windows and packaging in general.

Its flexibility allows it to acquire many forms and is widely used in the manufacture of electronics, home appliances and plumbing.

In addition, some types of plastics have high impact resistance, and used, for example, the auto industry in manufacturing bumpers.

These are just some of the countless everyday applications we make this material so important.

But you and where you use the plastic in your everyday life?

Yeah, the first step to understanding the production of plastic is to know what he’s done.

And although it seems strange, plastic material comes from a well known and widely used by man: oil.

Surely you’ve heard of oil, but still might not know that he is an organic result of a maturation process over millions of years, being composed of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons.

Because of these hydrocarbon chains have different sizes and different boiling points, it is possible to separate them through a process called distillation or cracking.

That’s what happens in an oil refinery.

Each chain has a length property that makes it useful in a specific way.

For this reason, there are many petroleum products: gasoline, kerosene, asphalt, paraffin and plastic.

Ok, the plastic is a petroleum derivative, but this is just the beginning of your production process.

By cracking of petroleum, you get the raw material of plastic, naphtha.

Refinery, naphtha is carried to the petrochemical plants where they undergo several processes to form monomers like ethylene and propylene that are used in the manufacture of plastics.

The term comes from Greek and monomer is the combination of two words: mono, “a” and mere “part”, ie a small part that can bind the other.

And that is the case, these monomers bind to form long chains, polymers.

This chain reaction is called polymerization and varies with different types of monomers.

In the case of the ethylene monomer, for example, it happens from the addition of an initiator, the hydroxyl (OH-), obtained by disruption of hydrogen peroxide, commonly known as hydrogen peroxide (H2O2).

The OH-radical reacts with a molecule of the monomer, which in turn reacts with another molecule and so on, forming a polymer called polyethylene.

The different types of resulting polymers are usually in the form of granules, called “pellets” and are ready to be processed in various products.

What gives the specific characteristics of each polymer is the size of their molecules and how they are linked.

Therefore, there are several types of plastic with different applications.

Just to cite some examples, the poly ethyl terephthalate, better known by the acronym PET, is widely used in the manufacture of soft drink bottles.

PVC, in turn, is present in linings and water pipes.

It still has the polystyrene, better known as Styrofoam, Teflon, found on pots and pans;

PVA present in the water-based paints, and polypropylene, used in the manufacture of syringes hospital, helmets and even automobile in the textile industry.

Ufa, remember that the characteristics of each plastic vary according to their use.

After the cracking of petroleum and obtaining the polymer, comes the turn of making the final product, from plastic molding.

This process is conducted in factories like this one.

He saw the big work that gives produce plastic and leave those packages ready pro use?

Yeah, but if you think that our program ends here, you’re wrong.

You can not talk in plastic without touching the environmental issue.

Currently the world production of plastics is around 150 million tons annually.

It is true that much of what is produced are durable goods like appliances, for example, which take years to be thrown away.

However, it does not happen with disposable products like cups and plastic bottles, which are used once and ends up in the trash immediately.

The solution to this and other environmental problems is a key word for the recycling.

It is the case with this plant in Santo Andre, Sao Paulo metropolitan region.

Here, the PET bottles collected in recycling cooperatives, are transformed into a kind of plastic fiber, widely used in the manufacture of various products.

Oil to its thousands of forms and uses, today we learned a little more about the production and recycling of plastic.

We found that it can be transparent or colored, soft or tough, which is present in our day-to-day since I woke up to the time of going to bed.

And the best part is that now you know how. Wise up and see you soon.

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