The Development of Plastics For the Future

Question 1

Which fuel is mainly used in the production of plastic

Answer 1

Crude oil

Question 2

What percentage of oil is used for the production of plastic

Answer 2

4%

Question 3

What are the problems with petrol derived plastics

Answer 3

Environmental pollution during manufacture, resource depletion of a finite resource and severe pollution of landfill, oceans and beached which has a severe impact on biodiversity
A further implication is that the plastics are not biodegradable which causes further problems with landfill in the future

Question 4

What is Distillation

Answer 4

Is a process used to separate a pure liquid from a mixture of liquids. It works because the liquids have different boiling points

Question 5

What are the processes involved in Distillation and explain how it works

Answer 5

Heating > Evaporating > Cooling > Condensing
The fractional distillation process differs from distillation only in that it separates coming of at different heights. The column is hot at the bottom and cool at the top.
Substances with high boiling points condense at the bottom and substances with low boiling points at the top
The crude oil is evaporated and its vapour are allowed to condense at different temperatures in the fractioning column. Each fraction contains hydrocarbon molecules with a similar number of carbon atoms

Question 6

Explain the Cracking process and why it is used

Answer 6

The fraction Naptha is the crucial element used in the production of Plastics. Naptha is still not ready to be used for polymerisation. A thermal process called cracking breaks the Naptha down into smaller hydrocarbons such as ethene and propylene
During this cracking process, the long chained Naptha is vaporised and passed over a hot catalyst. This breaks the chemical bonds in the molecules and forms smaller hydrocarbons molecules such as the alkenes

Question 7

What is the major problem associated with Plastics

Answer 7

The issue with plastic not degrading is to do with the scale of time required for them to degrade fully, via the work of microorganism. All will eventually degrade but some can take up to 1000 years.
The recent increase in use of plastics in makes this a problem. 38% of plastics in the EU are currently being sent to landfill and only 9% is being recycled. This means as plastics are sent to landfills are taking up a lot of valuable space and will not decompose for hundreds and even thousands of years. This is a huge the problem as we are going to run out of space
This will have a negative impact on the use of land for dumping and potential loss of biodiversity for animals and so on.