This Material Will Change Our WORLD!

hi everyone the washing machine has turned my t-shirt again evidently i have to throw it away it's good that there is a container nearby [Music] will someone really get this t-shirt for free hmm i need to google it well it's not a suitable option maybe it's possible to recycle old clothes chemically and make something useful from them let's find out [Music] do you know how to dive into the world of neural networks as efficiently as possible you just need to be an expert in the field of programming or have a suitable and correct tool that can solve any problem and brilliant helps me in this brilliant is an amazing tool for learning based on problem solving with a hands-on approach with more than 60 interactive courses in mathematics natural sciences and computer science yes now going through a small task a day and increasing the load constantly you can pump up your critical thinking without leaving home brilliant will surprise you every time not even like that you'll surprise yourself every time by upgrading your knowledge and skills in programming with the help of courses and generate new ways to solve problems interested then follow my link brilliant.org toy32 and register for free and the first 200 people will receive a 20 discount on a premium subscription besides a worldwide problem of plastic waste which is currently in heavy rotation forcing the government to ban the use of disposable spoons and straws and making plastic bags cost an exorbitant price only few people think about other problems humanity is facing for instance the problem of textile waste frankly speaking i don't consider myself to be a fashion man or a lover or wearing expensive clothes and then coming home and eating cheap noodles and rusts however some people in our society have a different opinion many people buy piles of clothes whereas them a couple of times to show off and then simply from them away give them to their relatives or put them into special containers meant for poor people who supposedly can take them for free in reality nowadays major second hand shops on such containers and 90 of such donated clothes will go to waste anyway because of having some defects or being unfit for sale that is why today most unnecessary clauses end their life cycle at local landfills mixed with plastic making the ecological problem even worse which humanity created back in the mid 20th century speaking of the plastic problem nowadays humanity is approaching a real plastic disaster because earth has accumulated so much polymer waste that there is nowhere to dispose of it in some countries besides landfills even forests and many bodies of water which look like trashy soaps are overloaded with rubbish and season it with dirt all of this creates a huge environmental problem because when polymers decay they release toxic and cancerous chemical compounds into water and soil for instance such a chemical as the bisphenol a gets released which is used in some kinds of plastic items as a hardener besides hazardous chemicals simply floating plastic rubbish in the oceans can harm a lot of kinds of animals which often get stuck in it or mistake it for food for instance many girls eat plastic cups and think that it's their breakfast because they have very few taste receptors on their tongues which is why their stomachs simply get filled with ingestible plastics and birds die which is very sad also we should not forget about the problem of microplastic which forms when sunlight breaks down some polymers into particles which are just several micrometers wide which can stay in the ear or get carried by sea currents the paradox is that initially scientists and engineers develop different kind of plastics as a new and ideal material which is light firm and last almost forever i think you know that plastic bottles need 500 years to break down in the soil that's because there are no bacteria or other microorganisms in nature which can break it down or simply put eat polymer molecules different kinds of plastic are made of of course if you wait for a couple of dozen millions of years maybe there will be microorganisms which can recycle some kind of plastic but for now people themselves have to find a solution for how to recycle piles of polymeric rubbish along with old textiles and closes that no one needs well in contrast to governments which can only ban something i went to the polymer chemistry department of thailand university of technology to investigate solutions to this problem there along with local scientists will try to recycle unnecessary clauses along with some used plastic obtaining a new and unusual material in this laboratory scientists and students developed new polymer materials and also methods of recycling plastic waste materials but why polypropylene you may wonder i think i have to tell you about some basic concepts in polymer chemistry nowadays plastic salt in shops is divided into many types for instance a container may be made of polyethylene another container may be made of polypropylene and yet another container may even be made of polyethylene terephthalate that's because certain polymers are most suitable for storing certain products for instance polyethylene which stands low temperatures well which is why it is used to store different frozen foods on the other hand polypropylene which stands hot water well which is why it's used to make different containers for food the more kind of plastic there are on the market the harder is to recycle it the problem is that the chemical composition of all kinds of plastic is completely different which is wiser have different viscosity hardness and other properties of course all kinds of plastic can just be melted together when recycled and be used to make a cripped piece of plastic tile like they do in africa but because different kinds of plastic almost does mix together firmness and durability of such tiles are very questionable that is why because different kinds of plastic cannot be mixed to produce a high quality product ilia has sorted and rinsed different polypropylene plastic waste at home beforehand we chose this kind of plastic because it's quite durable and easy to recycle we just need to chop it to the desired size which is why first we chopped a yogurt bottle and other plastic items into small pieces and a laboratory meal did the rest basically what we are doing here is what happens at plastic recycling plants but at a smaller scale and with a little bit of know-how that big plants are far from using besides plastic waste we're also going to recycle textile that's why along with bits of plastic we're also sending pieces of an old cotton short into the mill just like the previous raw material this textile needs to be well ground with the help of the meal the textile ended up being 30 of the whole mess now in order for polypropylene to mix with textile and form a single material we're adding a regular chalk to improve the fluidity of the mass and also a special polymer you can see its name on your screen this additive will help take style to better bond with the plastic in order for the obtained material not gravel and flake in the end to give our material a lighter color i'm adding a little bit of titanium dioxide which serves as a pigment after stirring all the components of such plastic they need to be melted in order for all the ingredients to get stirred as well as possible making a smooth mess which will be easy to work with for this purpose there is special extruder in the laboratory which is used for both educational and research purposes its mechanism is fairly simple after being loaded with plastic granules the screw conveyor since plastic into the chamber heated to a certain temperature where it smells and is formed into such a role basically this mechanism is slightly more complex than that of a regular mincer first we clean the device from the vestiges of the previous experiments that the students conducted with the help of pure polypropylene granules after that we started loading the machine with our mixture of plastic and textile some time later the machine started working and producing what resembles hairy macaroni yes this is that very plastic mixed with cotton closes which for now doesn't look that attractive but still for our next experiment we need at least 300 grams of such raw material that's why we sent our macaroni to cool off on a special conveyor when she turned into hardened sticks made of a rather unusual material because of containing shark and cotton the obtained material is rather porous and that's why such sticks are quite fragile but still this raw material can be used to cast some small plastic items for this we need special copper molds and we are fitting our obtained hairy plastic macaroni into the molds and after that we press them into shape with the help of a special heated breast machine 10 minutes later we are taking out the obtained plastic shapes and cooling them off in cold water as a result we got such a plastic plate made of recycled plastic and old clothes i think we can make something interesting from it in the future but what properties does obtained plastic have you may wonder as i say everything is relative to measure some physical properties we decided to make the same plate but one made of pure polypropylene and without textile to do that we went through the same process like we did with the previous raw material but this time we used ready pure polypropylene granules [Music] [Applause] [Music] as a result we got two such plates one made of plastic and textile and other made of factory raw material they weighed almost the same because both clothes and polypropylene have extremely low density besides pure polypropylene is the lightest plastic in the world i decided to measure the hardness of these two plates with a special device which is designed to measure the hardness of different plastics basically both plates show similar results that's why recycled plastic almost doesn't differ from a factory made one the only major difference is smell the smell of the plate with textile slightly resembles burnt caramel most probably just because during the extrusion part of cellulose the shot consists of slightly broke down on being heated producing such a slightly sweet smell i'll also try to test the water resistance of these two plates to do that first i weighted them soaked them in hot water for an hour after that i wiped them with a napkin and measured their mesh again turns out that even the plastic with textile didn't soak a single gram of water and it's widely known fact that pure polypropylene is water resistant and if that was not enough you can use such a recycled plastic to cast almost anything in special machines to demonstrate that we need to return to the laboratory it's equipped with a rather powerful austrian machine for mold and plastic it can be loaded with different kinds of plastic and we can see how well different kind of plastic get molded under pressure in our case before molding we crumbled our leftover hairy macaroni obtaining small granules which can be fed into the machine the principle of the work of this mechanism is not difficult either first the machine heats up as the chamber gets filled with plastic where it melts quite quickly after that just crew conveyor pushed out the molten plastic like a mincer into a mold through special holes because the molds are cooled off with cold water the plastic hardens almost immediately and the radio components fell beneath the machine as a result in just several minutes you can load many different plastic components which are known in our university as bones with an almost ideal surface for different physical experiments besides bones made of recycled polypropylene and closes we also made taste samples made of pure polypropylene after producing all the samples they need to sit for about a week to allow crystallization of polymers their hardness and durability will be significantly improved especially if compared with those of freshly made plastic bones well it's time for testing in our university there is such a machine for conducting physical tests of different materials it measures the tensile strength the shape of our plastic bones is just ideal for such experiments that's why after some tweaking we can start our tests as you can see pure polypropylene doesn't stretch well because it's a fragile plastic but still such a bone restores a pollen force of 101 kilograms for instance if you compare it with polyethylene the latter plastic is more malleable but it will stood just 70 kilograms which is 40 percent less so let's see how our recycled plastic will behave here [Music] turns out that recycled plastic is even slightly firmer than pure factory made propylene because this bone we stood 109 kilograms before it broke interestingly enough the plastic with clothes turned out to be even firmer than pure polypropylene which is why it almost didn't stretch but still the higher the elastic modulus is the more fragile the material is for instance this bone made of pure polypropylene bends slightly when i try to break it but the plastic with textile is much easier to break even flow is slightly firmer such properties of the obtained material can be used for making some everyday objects which need to be both hard and light at the same time for instance if you substitute a perform in a modern machine we can produce let's say plastic door handles or smartphone cases unfortunately we didn't have such modes in our laboratory that is why for demonstration purposes we decided to cut out a hair brush from a plastic plate we made beforehand with the help of a laser [Music] by the way as we can see this kind of plastic is suitable for cutting with a laser the edges turn out to be even and smooth for instance if you compare this hair brush to a hairbrush that is completely made of polypropylene we'll see that regular plastic is less even and smooth now i can brush my hair with the help of a hair brush made of recycled plastic which could have been dumped into a landfill and could have polluted the environment that's why i think this technology has a great potential because it solves two problems at the same time which is disposing of plastic and disposing of textile which nowadays and which litters landfills besides hair brush the obtained composite material containing textile can also be used to make furniture for instance these old water resistant plastic strips and all clauses can be used for that technology yesterday that is why oftentimes countries which are so proud of their plastic waste recycling rates simply sold different kinds of plastic and after that they sell them to poorer countries for recycling or simply for burning but wait basically recycling means for instance to take this container melt it and make something else from it right this is when cunning legislative terms come into play and what may be called burning plastic waste in one county may be called recycling in another country that is why because of the high cost of the recycling plastic in rich countries only nine percent of plastic waste is really recycled in the world and all plastic bottles are used to make for instance flower parts this leads to a conclusion that nowadays immediate recycling of plastic waste must be supported by the government and tax cuts must be in place this is the only way to make this process profitable i reckon that the technology developed under the supervision of ilia will interest sponsors and get good exposure in the future for instance if you and your acquaintances work in the universities or some other interesting technologies and they want the whole world to learn about them send your messages to my email address i will gladly come to you and make a video about your project let's promote science together so i think after watching this video you'll know more about plastic recycling and how to better recycle some textile and if you like this video don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel to see many more new and interesting [Music]

Channel: Thoisoi2 - Chemical Experiments!

Views: 82,866

Keywords: Chemistry, polymers, plastic, polymer chemicals, plastic made of clothes, make plastic, plastic recycling, second use, clothes recycling, ecology, polymer chemistry, polypropylene, experiments, chemistry experiments, plastic experiments, polymer recycling, chemical formulas, laboratories, plastic molding, how to make plastic, scientists, science, Thoisoi channel

Id: S_7X7LUyBa0

Length: 19min 26sec (1166 seconds)

Published: Sat May 21 2022