A team of microbiologists and chemists at the Center for Sustainable Catalysis and Engineering, working with colleagues from Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research and Rheology and Technology ...
A team led by Virginia Tech researchers has developed a new method for upcycling plastics into high-value chemicals known as surfactants, which are used to create soap, detergent, and more. The work was published in Science.
Polymers
Aug 10, 2023
1
107
A team of engineers and materials scientists affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S., has developed a new way to depolymerize plastics using electrified spatiotemporal heating. In their paper, published in the journal ...
Polyethylene plastics—in particular, the ubiquitous plastic bag that blights the landscape—are notoriously hard to recycle. They're sturdy and difficult to break down, and if they're recycled at all, they're melted into ...
Polymers
Sep 29, 2022
1
167
A team of researchers at Virginia Tech working with one colleague from Dongbei University of Finance and Economics and another from Santa Clara University has developed a process for recycling polystyrene that involves the ...
A study of 29 European lakes has found that some naturally-occurring lake bacteria grow faster and more efficiently on the remains of plastic bags than on natural matter like leaves and twigs.
Environment
Jul 26, 2022
3
285
Scientists have designed a new material system to overcome one of the biggest challenges in recycling consumer products: mixed-plastic recycling. Their achievement will help enable a much broader range of fully recyclable ...
Polymers
Jul 20, 2022
0
136
Human saliva may contain an enzyme which can decompose the plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Researchers found the promising enzyme, a hydrolase, in a database containing human metagenome samples. As they report in ...
Biochemistry
Jun 29, 2022
0
691
If bioengineers can upcycle commodity plastics into higher-performance materials, they can establish sustained closed-loop manufacturing with broader industrial and environmental benefits. For example, upcycled plastics can ...
An enzyme variant created by engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin can break down environment-throttling plastics that typically take centuries to degrade in just a matter of hours to days.
Polymers
Apr 27, 2022
19
1100
A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs. Monomers of plastic are either natural or synthetic organic compounds.
The word plastic is derived from the Greek πλαστικός (plastikos) meaning capable of being shaped or molded, from πλαστός (plastos) meaning molded. It refers to their malleability, or plasticity during manufacture, that allows them to be cast, pressed, or extruded into a variety of shapes—such as films, fibers, plates, tubes, bottles, boxes, and much more.
The common word plastic should not be confused with the technical adjective plastic, which is applied to any material which undergoes a permanent change of shape (plastic deformation) when strained beyond a certain point. Aluminum which is stamped or forged, for instance, exhibits plasticity in this sense, but is not plastic in the common sense; in contrast, in their finished forms, some plastics will break before deforming and therefore are not plastic in the technical sense.
There are two types of plastics: thermoplastics and thermosetting polymers. Thermoplastics are the plastics that do not undergo chemical change in their composition when heated and can be moulded again and again; examples are polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). Thermosets can melt and take shape once; after they have solidified, they stay solid.
The raw materials needed to make most plastics come from petroleum and natural gas.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
