Plastic is everywhere, it's in everything -- your phone, this camera, the landfills,
the mountains, the forest, the beach, the ocean, sea turtles, so many fish… it's everywhere.
Sup gas guzzlers, Trace here for DNews.
If you never had to take organic chemistry then you don't know the scourge that is carbon
-- it's in everything.
Everything is a carbon and hydrogen chain.
You spend your time moving electrons around, changing bonds and hating life.
Orgo is extremely important, because basically all life contains the organic molecule carbon.
I mean, molecularly: humans, plants, dogs, cats, pizza…
pretty much everything contains carbon.
The plastic polyethylene is a long chain of carbons and hydrogens with some strong double
bonds between chunks.
Petroleum?
It's also just a chain of carbons with some hydrogens around it!
Both of these things are polluters, and both come from hydrocarbons of natural gas and
crude oil…
It might seem like alchemy, but what if there was a way to take all the crappy plastic,
rearrange the atoms and turn it into a fossil fuel?
Guess what, fam.
Now there is.
This paper is blank, we just wanted to do something dramatic…
Anyway, a 2016 paper in Science Advances announced they were able to turn polyethylene, into
energy -- potentially solving two polluting problems with one variable!
In their study, the researchers took plastic from bottles, food packaging, and shopping
bags (recycling plastic number 2 or 6) and mixed it with a catalyst breaking the long
chains of hydrocarbon plastic into an alkane!
Alkanes are a class of hydrocarbon.
We often burn alkanes for energy, like methane, propane or butane.
By their chemical calculation, they got 56-percent of the plastic to degrade into alkane oil
products -- namely DIESEL!!
Yep, these scientists turned plastic shopping bags into diesel, with a wax byproduct.
That waxy byproduct can be sold and used for resins and coatings, and the catalyst is reusable
after the chemical reaction is completed!
To be honest, this does feel like alchemy.
But it's needed.
There are a lot of other plastics out there that we need to deal with.
The polyethylenes in this process, remember, are only 2s or 6s, but there are dozens of
other plastics that accumulate in landfills and oceans.
According to American Chemical Council, if we can figure out the trash-to-energy pipeline,
it could create 9 billion dollars in economic output and create tens of thousands of new
jobs.
And they're not the only one advocating for this; in Australia and the United Kingdom,
various startups are converting polystyrene (number six), as well as twos, fives and sevens
to biofuels!
Global plastic production is ridiculous.
In 2013, according to WorldWatch, 299 million tons of plastics were created -- 10 to 20
million tons of that ended up in the ocean, with millions of tons ending up in landfills.
In Europe, they found 26 percent of the plastics consumed were recycled.
In the U.S.? Only 9 percent.
Take polyethylene, for example; as a product, it comprises 60 percent of all the plastic
trash in landfills!
Once there, it breaks into smaller and smaller pieces, but never truly disappears.
Not to mention, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, when you pay for fuel,
you're only paying for a little bit of the cost.
Both the fossil fuels themselves, and also the side effects of the mining and extraction,
transportation, and burning of those fuels harm the planet and things living on it.
This new process is still creating diesel, but its not drilling, extracting, refining
and transporting, new crude oils.
If we could break this fossil fuel chain by circling some of that back on itself, that
would be HUGE.
Could this solve our energy problems?
Not yet.
Though the researchers call this "unprecedented," the ability to change post-consumer plastics
into diesel and waxes isn't as efficient as just getting new diesel -- yet.
Currently, the ratio of plastic to catalyst is 30 to 1, but according to Phys-Org, the
researchers' goal is 10,000 to 1.
But while this is the first step, there might come a day when we look to landfills for fuel.
How do you feel when someone throws away a recyclable thing?
I die inside.
IT MAKES ME CRAZY.
Tell me in the comments.
Biodegradable plastics are the hot new thing, but do they really biodegrade -- HOW?!
Check this video to see the answer.
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