few months ago I made some nylon and
here's some footage from the video
although this is an interesting way to
make it it's not the most efficient
method and it's not how it's done
industrially the process that I showed
was mostly for demonstration purposes
because it's quite wasteful in terms of
solvents and other chemicals in this
video I want to show you guys how it's
done industrially but keep in mind I
don't have all the proper equipment so
it's not the cleanest process also in
particular I'm making nylon 6-6 which is
a specific type of nylon there are other
forms of nylon like nylon 6 which are
made in a different way and I'll
eventually cover this in some future
videos ok so to get started in terms of
chemicals I really only need 3 things
I'll be needing some 95% ethanol to use
as a solvent some hexamethylenediamine
and a dybbuk acid the adipic acid was
made in a previous video and if you're
interested in seeing how I did this
there's a link in the description
compared to the other method this is
really bare-bones just for comparison
purposes here's the list of chemicals
that I used for the other one anyway to
get things started I dumped a bunch of
adipic acid into a beaker followed by
some ethanol I turn on the magnetic
stirring and I wait for everything to
dissolve which for me took about 5
minutes it looks like everything is
dissolved at this point but it's still a
little bit cloudy so I'm gonna have to
filter it I quickly set up a glass
funnel which is plugged with some cotton
and topped with sea light before passing
through my solution I wet it with a
little bit of ethanol and then I dump
out everything that passed through
see light is especially good at
filtering out small particles so the
solution that I get through is crystal
clear
all the white stuff on the sides is a
dybbuk acid so using some ethanol I wash
the funnel a couple times to try to pass
it all through
okay so with the adipic acid solution
made it's time to dissolve the hexa
methylene diamine
the hexamethylenediamine is quite
corrosive and stinky and it also fumes
like you see here
so to this I add some ethanol and I turn
on the magnetic stirring eventually most
of it dissolves and I add a small amount
of water to get rid of the rest okay so
this is how things are going to go down
I bring back my diffic acid ethanol
solution and above it I set up a
separatory funnel then I dump the
hexamethylenediamine solution into the
funnel I clean up the beaker with some
ethanol then I turn on the stirring and
I'm ready to get the reaction going
I open up the separatory funnel and I
adjust the drip rate so it takes about
10 minutes for it all to be added so in
terms of what's going on here adipic
acid is well an acid and hexamethylene
diamine is a base so when it's added it
undergoes an acid-base reaction this
produces the nylon 6-6 salt which
initially stays dissolved in the
solution
I thought the salt was going to
precipitate out about half way through
the addition but even when I was done
it didn't seem like much was happening I
filmed it for about five minutes and the
whole time I was kind of confused as to
why nothing was happening the reaction
produces some heat and it's a little bit
warm here so I thought maybe that was
keeping things dissolved I went to get
some plastic wrap to cover the top so I
could put it in the freezer and of
course when I turn my back for something
like thirty seconds that's when
something actually happens anyway
I let it stir for about five more
minutes and then I put my plastic wrap
to good use and I threw everything in
the freezer I'm not sure if this is
actually necessary but I figured that
maybe it would help precipitate a little
bit more of the salt so a couple hours
later when it was nice and chilly I
vacuum filtered it off
I used some ice-cold ethanol to wash the
salt a couple times and then I left the
vacuum on to try to dry things up even
after leaving it for something like 20
minutes on the filter it was still a
little bit wet with ethanol so I threw
it in my vacuum desiccator I left it for
about a day or so and when I took it out
it was nice and dry but for some reason
it had turned a little bit yellow I'm
not really sure why anyway now that it's
dry I'm ready to heat it and convert it
into the polymer everything is added to
a small round bottom flask and then I
set up a pretty weird apparatus on the
Left I have two hoses feeding into one
where the top one is a nitrogen feed and
the bottom one goes to my vacuum pump
the reaction produces water so I set up
a condenser and a receiving flask and
the opening on the right leads to a
balloon this reaction needs to be done
at pretty high temperatures and in the
presence of air both the salt and the
polymer that forms can sometimes degrade
to avoid this it's generally done under
an inert atmosphere with something like
nitrogen because there's air all mixed
into the salt and throughout the
apparatus it's not quite as simple as
just turning on the nitrogen we first
need to take all of the air out so to do
this I make sure my nitrogen tank is
closed I turn on my pump and I pull as
good of a vacuum as I can when the
vacuum is pulled you can see the balloon
getting sucked in when my pump gets to
the max vacuum that it can pull I close
the valve and I open the nitrogen tank
when I do this the balloon puffs up a
little and when I get to around this
point I close the tank and then repeat
this cycle two or three times just to
get out as much of the air as possible
after the final cycle I leave the
nitrogen on and I take off the balloon
so at this point the entire thing is
filled with nitrogen and I also have a
constant flow of fresh nitrogen moving
through it now I'm ready to get the
reaction going and I need to crank it up
to about 220 degrees Celsius it's kept
at this temperature for about an hour
then it's raised to 270 C and kept there
for three hour
270 si is the melting point of nylon 6-6
so when I heated to this temperature it
should completely liquefy ideally this
would be done over a hot oil bath but I
didn't have any silicone oil so I tried
to get away with using a heating mantle
I thought that maybe it could be the
same thing if I just hovered the flask
in the middle but it didn't really work
if I completely covered it it probably
would have worked a lot better but I
really wanted you guys to be able to see
what was going on so I decided to try a
more direct heating method and I swapped
it for a smaller mantle I insulated the
back portion of the flask with some
aluminum foil and I hope that maybe this
would work I cranked up the temperature
and it seemed to be working a lot better
than the other one a bunch of water is
being produced which tells me that the
reaction is going on and I also saw some
melting occurring so what i'm doing here
is condensing the nylon salt into a
polymer and producing water as a side
product for this reaction to occur we
need electrons from the nitrogen to
attack the carbonyl of the adipate but
it really doesn't want to the nitrogen
doesn't have any electrons to attack
with and the atopy doesn't really want
to take any so to make this reaction
work we need to force it by heating it
up as far as I know the exact mechanism
isn't known but I did find a paper that
suggests what might be going on under
the high heat the Salt River it's back
to the starting materials and the adipic
acid then forms a dimer with itself this
dimerized structure is much more willing
to take electrons so it gets attacked by
the hexamethylenediamine
a bunch of electrons move around and it
produces a compound with two hydroxide
groups the high temperature of the
reaction then causes a water molecule to
be kicked off and it forms the final a
mi group this new molecule has an open
nitrogen on one end and a carboxylic
acid on the other so it can keep
undergoing reactions and extending the
chain length overall this reaction
process is very different from the one
that I did in a previous video but the
idea is pretty
similar to make the reaction work I
first had two derivatives the adipic
acid to make a deploy oil chloride so by
doing this it can be directly attacked
by the a mean and it doesn't form this
deactivated salt compound it allowed me
to do the reaction at room temperature
but as I said earlier it produces a lot
more waste I continued heating things
and it did slowly melt but it just
didn't seem like it was working very
well as a last-ditch effort I completely
sealed it in with aluminum foil but
surprisingly this didn't seem to work
too well either
it's hard to see here but there was
liquid at the bottom and to me it kind
of looked like the nylon salt at the top
was just kind of stuck and not falling
down so to try to fix this I take away
the mantle let it cool and knock the
stuff down to the bottom then I flushed
it again with nitrogen and started
heating it up at first this seemed to be
helping quite a bit a lot of the salt
had melted and water was passing over to
the condenser however it eventually
slowed down and seemed like it was stuck
again this time though there was no salt
that I could knock down to the bottom so
there wasn't much I could do here again
I tried insulating the whole thing but
it didn't work in the end I think there
were two major reasons why this setup
didn't work first of all in the original
procedure it called for a pear-shaped
flask and not a round bottom flask and
it also said to use a hot oil bath so
the importance of a pear-shaped flask is
that it's much narrower and I think it's
just a lot easier for the heat to
penetrate to the center of it
I think the larger radius of this flask
just made it really hard and on top of
this the nylon on the outer edges was
insulating the stuff on the inside also
the oil bath has a much more even and
direct application of heat and I think
that really helps anyway it just didn't
seem like my process was working so I
took it off heating and let it cool
the nylon was just one solid chunk in
the flask so unfortunately to get it out
I had to sacrifice it in the flask the
bottom portion of the nylon often
completely melted so the polymerization
was much more complete than the top part
the bottom looked and felt very plasticy
but the top part was a lot more like the
nylon salt I started with this piece is
way too big to put back into any sort of
flask so I tried melting it again in a
beaker I tried to do the lazy man method
where I just flushed the beaker with a
bunch of nitrogen for a while and then
put a watch glass on top at room
temperature nitrogen is slightly lighter
than air so it's probably going to leave
the beaker but I was really hopeful it
would stay inside I cranked up the
heating mantle and it looked like the
reaction was starting but it was
actually just smoking because it was
burning I thought that maybe it wasn't
coming into contact well with the bottom
so I flipped it over flushed it with
nitrogen and tried it again I heated it
to about 280 C and kept it there for
several minutes but basically nothing
happened at this point it really just
seemed like good consistent even heating
was the most important thing in this
preparation I really did want to
polymerize the whole thing and not just
the bottom portion so I figured I try
one last time using the heat gun at
first it seemed to be working and it was
melting but just like when it was in the
flask it quickly slowed down I tried
putting it closer to heat it up more but
I ended up just burning it so I figured
at this point
screw it I'm just going to directly
blast it
I put the nozzle of the gun right into
the beaker and it actually seemed to be
the most effective thing in just a few
minutes I was able to liquefy the
majority of it from all of the heat it
did start to burn a little but I really
didn't care I continued to heat it but
there was one stubborn piece that wasn't
melting so I tried to get it to melt by
mixing it up a little
it ended up just getting stuck to the
spatula so I directly blasted it and
melted it off in the original procedure
also was to melt everything like this
and then to keep it at this temperature
for about three hours the idea of this
is to polymerize things as much as
possible and to have the longest polymer
chains that we can get for most polymers
the chain length is directly related to
how strong it is so this is pretty
important to do however because my
temperature control here is absolutely
horrible I was really afraid of burning
things there's no way that I'd be able
to consistently heat things for three
hours and on top of this the air might
start to degrade some of the nylon so
for these two reasons the moment
everything was completely liquefied I
took it off heat and let it cool the
polymer that I get here is not going to
be amazing but I still imagine it's
going to be better than what I had
before just before I took it off heating
I tried to put in a metal spatula to see
if I could pull out a string of nylon
but it really didn't work I also tried
it with a glass rod but that didn't work
either I think at this point the chain
length is still a little too small it
started to solidify the moment the heat
was taken away and it only took about
four minutes to be completely solid
what's kind of interesting is that as it
cools you can see it contract and pull
away from the walls of the glass
my final result was this really dirty
looking block of plastic that was stuck
at the bottom of the beaker even though
it pulled away from the walls as it
cooled I thought it was still stuck and
I figured I would have to smash it to
get it out
however as I was doing some test wind-up
shots I ended up tapping the bottom a
few times and I realized it was loose so
luckily for me I didn't have to break
any of my precious beakers and it was
pretty easy to get out so as I just said
this piece looks really dirty but I
actually think it kind of gives it a
cool texture something I immediately
noticed though is that if you look at
the back there's a whole bunch of cracks
so it's not going to be the most
structurally stable thing to test it out
a little though I flipped it over and
whacked it a whole bunch of times with
the wooden handle portion of my hammer
and it made some nice plasticky sounds I
then wax did a whole bunch of times with
my spatula but it didn't go as well as
before and I've included my incredibly
genuine reaction no anyway I went ahead
and tried to break it again but
surprisingly I tried as hard as I could
and I really wasn't able to
another strength test I just flat-out
smashed it with a hammer
you
recovered a small piece that flew off
and I smashed it again this time I was
actually kind of surprised because most
of it stayed together in any case though
I think I should demonstrate what
properly produced nylon should actually
look like this is just something I had
lying around I'm not exactly sure if
it's nylon 6 or nylon 6-6 but it doesn't
really matter now just for a final test
that I forgot to do earlier I'm just
going to spray some water on it when I
do this you can see it quickly beat up
and get repelled away this isn't the
most scientifically rigorous test but it
does show that some polymerization has
occurred because the original salt was
quite water soluble it is possible that
the salt I had could have just melted
and re solidified as the same thing but
this does kind of show that some sort of
change occurred anyway that's about it
for this video in the future I think I
will revisit this project and try to do
it differently and get some actually
good nylon out of it
I haven't advertised this for a while
but if any of you are interested in
getting any Nile red beakers you can go
to my website at Nile red dot CA I just
made another order for glassware and in
the next few months I'll be getting more
beakers condenser columns Erlenmeyer
flasks round bottoms and a couple other
things
big thanks goes out to all of my
supporters on patreon anyone who
supports me will see my videos 24 hours
before I posted to YouTube and they'll
also be able to directly contact me
anyone who supports me with $5 or more
will also get their name at the end of
the video like you see here
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