DESIGNING THE DEATH OF PLASTIC
Everyone wants to save the environment by not using plastic but the truth is plastic has become such an integral part of our day to day life that it is impossible to avoid the plastic fully.
Here Adam Feinberg from university of Illinois at Urbana Champaign designed the death of the plastic.
Yes, you heard it right !
Sounds Impossible, But its true !
Let's see how it works.
The plastic what we used in day to day life is made up of ssynthetic polymers, because they were cheap and durable material.
Most synthetic polymers don't decompose or disintegrate themselves in fact they were made to last as long as possible results in being used in vast majority of applications.
Plastic indeed is very dangerous for environment which leads scientist to design a plastic that destruct or disintegrate on their commands.
How It Works ?
As per process of making this plastic and working stated by scientist the starting point requires picking polymers that are inherently unstable;e, and often historically overlooked because of their fragility given a choice, their units would rather stay as small molecules.
What scientist do is force those molecules to link up into long chains, and then trap the resulting polymers.
A demonstration of plastic being degraded by high-powered light. Dr. Feinberg used one watt per square centimeter of white light to eat away at the middle of the material as it was held between two clamps.
Dismantling these polymers is sometimes called unzipping them because once the polymers encounter a trigger that removes those traps, their units fall off one after another until the polymers have completely switched back to small molecules.
"As soon as you start the process it just keep going and destructs itself."
The polymers are imprisoned in circular loop instead of open loops They have mixed with a Little bit of yellow, light sensitive dye. when the light shines on the plastic, the energized dye molecules rip electrons out from the polymers. The loops break, exposing the polymer ends, and the polymers unzip.
A plastic sample under U.V. light. The samples contained a yellow dye, DCA, that interacts with the polymer and starts the unzipping process
In the theory, these next generations polymers could help environment by replacing plastic. most recycling done today involves melting of plastic and moulding.
Will it Replace Plastic?
"In my view it has great potential, the problem is to make it cheap enough and to make the properties competitive enough to be useful and have market penetration for the consumer,: Dr. Hillnyer said.
Hence Economically replacing the all the plastic might not be feasible.
But still some scientists like Dr. Hillmyer says," Used chemically recyclable materials could become practical especially if companies begin taking responsibility for their products after their useful life."
He co-founded a start-up company Valerian Materials to commercialize the recyclable polyurethane.
"If car companies had to take back a used car, for instance, it might make sense to have an internal chemical recycling system to make new materials from old ones,"he says.
It can also be useful to recycle laminates, composites and even electronics which we are not really Good at right now.
The Conclusion
Designing the plastics which can disintegrate itself will be gift to the environment. It could be used for recycling of plastic which will leads to better usage of materials and low pollution.
But still It is expensive compare to the plastic which is in use. It is the biggest problem that scientist are facing.
As lots of scientist are studying on this theory we hope that one day it will come true.
Image Source: Google Images, The new york Times
Orignal article Published souce : The new york times
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