When you watch television, use a computer, ride in a bus, train, or plane, you are using plastics.

When
you go to the doctors office or hospital or shop at the grocery store, you again are relying on plastics.

So where do plastics come from and just what are they?

Plastics are derived from materials found in nature, such as natural gas, oil, coal, minerals and plants.
The very first plastics were made by naturedid you know that rubber from a rubber tree is actually a
plastic?

Interest in making plastics arose in the 1800s to replace scarce materials such as ivory and tortoise shell.
The first synthetic plastics were derived from cellulose, a substance found in plants and trees. Cellulose
was heated with chemicals and resulted in a new material that was extremely durable.

The raw materials for todays plastics come from many places (some even use salt!), but most plastics
can be made from the hydrocarbons that are readily available in natural gas, oil and coal.

What are Plastics: the Chemistry

The chemistry of plastics can be complex, but the basics are straightforward. Think back to your high
school science lessons about atoms and molecules (groups of atoms). Plastics are simply chains of like
molecules linked together. These chains are called polymers. This is why many plastics begin with poly,
such as polyethylene, polystyrene, and polypropylene. Polymers often are made of carbon and hydrogen
and sometimes oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, chlorine, fluorine, phosphorous, or silicon.

The term plastics encompasses all these various polymers.

Although there are many polymers, plastics in general are lightweight with significant degrees of
strength. Plastics can be molded, extruded, cast and blown into seemingly limitless shapes and films or
foams or even drawn into fibers for textiles. Many types of coatings, sealants and glues are actually
plastics, too.

Plastics are derived from organic products. The materials used in the production of plastics are natural
products such as cellulose, coal, natural gas, salt and, of course, crude oil.

Crude oil is a complex mixture of thousands of compounds. To become useful, it must be processed.

The production of plastic begins with a distillation process in an oil refinery

The distillation process involves the separation of heavy crude oil into lighter groups called fractions.
Each fraction is a mixture of hydrocarbon chains (chemical compounds made up of carbon and
hydrogen), which differ in terms of the size and structure of their molecules. One of these fractions,
naphtha, is the crucial element for the production of plastics.

The two major processes used to produce plastics are called polymerisation and polycondensation, and
they both require specific catalysts. In a polymerisation reactor, monomers like ethylene and propylene
are linked together to form long polymers chains. Each polymer has its own properties, structure and
size depending on the various types of basic monomers used.

There are many different types of plastics, and they can be grouped into two main polymer families:

Thermoplastics (which soften on heating and then harden again on cooling)

Thermosets (which never soften when they have been moulded)

Examples of Thermoplastics

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene ABS

Polycarbonate - PC

Polyethylene - PE

Polyethylene terephthalate - PET

Poly(vinyl chloride) - PVC

Poly(methyl methacrylate) - PMMA

Polypropylene - PP

Polystyrene - PS

Expanded Polystyrene - EPS

Examples of Thermosets

Epoxide (EP)

Phenol-formaldehyde (PF)

Polyurethane (PUR)

Polytetrafluoroethylene - PTFE

Unsaturated polyester resins (UP)

distillation, process involving the conversion of a liquid into vapour that is subsequently condensed back
to liquid form. It is exemplified at its simplest when steam from a kettle becomes deposited as drops of
distilled water on a cold surface. Distillation is used to separate liquids from nonvolatile solids, as in the
separation of alcoholic liquors from fermented materials, or in the separation of two or more liquids
having different boiling points, as in the separation of gasoline, kerosene, and lubricating oil from crude
oil. Other industrial applications include the processing of such chemical products as formaldehyde and
phenol and the desalination of seawater. The distillation process appears to have been utilized by the
earliest experimentalists. Aristotle (384322 bc) mentioned that pure water is made by the evaporation
of seawater. Pliny the Elder (ad 2379) described a primitive method of condensation in which the oil
obtained by heating rosin is collected on wool placed in the upper part of an apparatus known as a still.

Most methods of distillation used by industry and in laboratory research are variations of simple
distillation. This basic operation requires the use of a still or retort in which a liquid is heated, a
condenser to cool the vapour, and a receiver to collect the distillate. In heating a mixture of substances,
the most volatile or the lowest boiling distills first, and the others subsequently or not at all. This simple
apparatus is entirely satisfactory for the purification of a liquid containing nonvolatile material and is
reasonably adequate for separating liquids of widely divergent boiling points. For laboratory use, the
apparatus is commonly made of glass and connected with corks, rubber bungs, or ground-glass joints.
For industrial applications, larger equipment of metal or ceramic is employed.

A method called fractional distillation, or differential distillation, has been developed for certain
applications, such as petroleum refining, because simple distillation is not efficient for separating liquids
whose boiling points lie close to one another. In this operation the vapours from a distillation are
repeatedly condensed and revaporized in an insulated vertical column. Especially important in this
connection are the still heads, fractionating columns, and condensers that permit the return of some of
the condensed vapour toward the still. The objective is to achieve the closest possible contact between
rising vapour and descending liquid so as to allow only the most volatile material to proceed in the form
of vapour to the receiver while returning the less volatile material as liquid toward the still. The
purification of the more volatile component by contact between such countercurrent streams of vapour
and liquid is referred to as rectification, or enrichment.