Chemists Transform Plastic Waste into Miniature Soap Bars
It may soon be time to cleanse our hands of plastic waste. Quite literally.
About sixty percent of all plastic ever produced winds up in landfills or as environmental debris. Only about one-tenth of plastic refuse is ever recycled, and much of it is repurposed into low-quality items such as park benches (SN: 1/27/21). Consequently, chemists are attempting to “upcycle” plastic into more valuable basic materials.
Now, old plastic can be converted into surfactants, researchers report in the August 10 issue of Science. Surfactants are the primary components of numerous products, including lubricants, ski wax, detergents, and cleansers.
“To me, plastic waste basically [is] aboveground crude oil,” says Guoliang Liu, a chemist from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. To produce valuable chemicals, “We don’t have to go deep into the ocean or underground to mine [it] anymore.”
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The Chemistry Behind Surfactants and Plastics: Molecular Contrasts and Water-Attractive Termination
Surfactants and the two most common types of plastic, polyethylene and polypropylene, are composed of carbon-atom molecular chains. However, the molecules of surfactants are significantly shorter than those of plastics and are terminated by clusters of water-attractive atoms.
To convert plastic into surfactants, Liu and his coworkers designed a unique reactor that heats and condenses plastic into a wax with short carbon chains. Researchers created surfactant from wax by capping the wax’s molecules with clusters of oxygen atoms and treating them with an alkaline solution. Tiny slabs of soap were produced by mixing the surfactant with a dab of colorant and fragrance.
However, it is unlikely that repurposed plastic will be used to clean up spills anytime soon. Researchers can only produce approximately 0.5 grams of surfactant at a time. If Liu and his team can find a method to scale up the process, they plan to collaborate with industry to clean up plastic waste.
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Source: Science News
