subject: The Process of Plastic Making [print this page] Plastic is known as material which contains some elements such as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, chlorine, nitrogen, and also sulfur. Those elements are firmly held together so that they can create heavy plastic molecules. In addition, plastic is referred as polymers.
Plastics are commonly used for some different applications such as dentures, combs, eyeglass frames, water containers, and some more. Plastic containers, boxes and bins are also widely used for storing some different liquid and also solid products.
Today, plastic is commonly made from petroleum. The first thing to do is to drill the plastic and transport it to the refinery. In this step, the petroleum will be processed along with the natural gas to create the propane, ethane, and other petrochemical products. Then, the propane and ethane which is formed in the refinery will be broken down by using furnaces at high temperatures so that they will form propylene and ethylene.
The propylene and ethylene is then transferred to the reactor to be combined with a catalyst so that it will produce a powdery form. This powdery form is known as the polymer. In the next step, the polymer is combined with some additives and fed into an extruder. It will enter the mold to be processed.
The melted plastic will cool down and then it will be fed into Pelletier so that the polymers will be divided into tiny pallets. These pellets are then used by some manufacturers as the raw material for some different products such as combs, containers, dentures, plastic utensils, and some other plastic products. However, there are some more processes that should be done for the final product such as extrusion molding, injection molding, blow molding, casting, and come others.
However, it takes a lot of petroleum. A new innovation has been in the USA that is by using the combination of petroleum and carbon dioxide. It will be beneficial to reduce petroleum need by half.
Instead of using petroleum, plastic can also be made from corn. How can it be? Well, corn contains carbohydrate sugars which can be used to form a plastic which is known as polylactide polymers. This is remarkable invention which is beneficial for today's world. The most important thing from this invention is that it is renewable so that it can be widely produced. In addition, it reduces the dependency on the petroleum.
