TIL 31: Plants to the rescue
Ever heard of Plant-based plastics?
These are essentially plastics derived from plant oil rather than conventional fossil-fuel-based plastics. German chemists have developed two of these sustainable plant-based plastic alternatives to high-density polyethylene. According to the chemists, these can be chemically recycled more easily and are nearly 10 times as efficient, thanks to their molecular structures and the ‘break points’ engineered in them.
Which begs the question, how does chemical recycling of plastics work?
While most recycling done today is Mechanical, where plastics are sorted and sliced into tiny pellets and then used to create newer plastic materials, chemical recycling works differently.
Plastics are placed in Ethanol or Methanol at 120 degrees Celsius with a catalyst, then cooled and recrystallized before filtering them out. This is more efficient than Mechanical processes and recovers 96% of the material.
However, this is a bit problematic for a particular reason- plastic is extremely strong.
This is also the reason why it’s so useful as a material. The strong carbon-carbon bonds inside plastics could require 600 degrees to break without any added chemicals or catalysts.
And while Chemical Recycling does a fine job of breaking them, the process is extremely energy-intensive and could result in a lot of harmful emissions.
Plant-based plastics, on the other hand, are much easier to recycle because of their long carbon chains. They’re also more stronger and efficient than traditional plastics and can be more sustainably sourced in nature than crude oil.
So what’s preventing industries from using them?
Well, you may have guessed it, the cost of producing. Conventional plastic is so darn cheap and so widely in production, that it's extremely hard to compete against it with industries.
Although maybe some government intervention could do the trick. Maybe time will tell.
#TodayILearned #TILSanchit
