The Process of Creating Plastics

Plastic is abundant in business and everyday life. We can find it as product components, containers of products, and furniture. Plastic have many uses in the medical field as well, with the introduction of polymer implants and other medical decives derived at least partially from plastic. Almost everyone knows plastic and using it, but most of them don’t know how to manufacture it. Early plastics were bio-derived materials such as egg and blood proteins, which are organic polymers. The development of plastics has envolved from the use of natural plastic materials (e.g., shellac) to the of chemically modified, natural materials (e.g., natural rubber, nitrocellulose, collagen) and finally to completely synthetic molecules (e.g., bakelite, expoy, polivynil chloride).

Parkesine (nitrocellulose) is considered the first man-made plastic. The plastic material was patented by Alexander Parkes, in Birmingham, England in1856. Parkesine was made from cellulose, the major component of plant cell walls, treated with nitric acid as a solvent. In modern era, plastic was made by petroleum, a mixture of petroleum with carbon diokside, and corn, but plastic was made by corn easy to melt when heaten more than 114°C, so plastic are made from petroleum have use until now.

Manufacture of plastic made from petroleum. First, a new crude pumped out of the ground is transported to an oil refinery. On oil refineries, crude oil must go through a purification process along with natural gas. Etana, propane, and other petrochemical products were produced by the refining process. In turn etana and propane were broken down using high-temperature stoves, ethylene and propane formed from tis process. These liquid plastics were allowed to cool and then leti was used to form polymers into tiny pellets.

In reactors, ethylene and propylene formed are combined with a catalyst to form substances such as flour. Substances such as flour are similar to powder detergent, this substance is a plastic polymer. In continuous mixing, some additives are combined with the polymer, then an extrusion process is carried out, where the plastic is in a liquid form. The plastic in this liquid form is allowed to cool and then the pelletizer is used to form the polymer into small pellets. These plastic pellets are then sent to customers. Manufacturers of combs, plastic bottles, dentures, etc. buy these plastic pellets to be used as material for making their products.

It is remarkable that plastic can be made using petroleum. But it takes a lot of petroleum to make plastic. Various efforts were made to prevent the depletion of this important resource. In December 2009, the Novomer company announced the commencement of the commercialization of polypropylene carbonate (PPC) materials using a combination of carbon dioxide and petroleum. By adding carbon dioxide, the oil needed for making plastic is reduced by half. Petroleum is a natural resource that cannot be renewed. It took thousands of years for petroleum to form. For that we should save on the use of plastic which is generally made from petroleum.