What is plastic made of and how is it made?
Nowadays plastic can be found in almost every household and it is hard to imagine everyday life without it. But what is this substance actually made of?
What is plastic made of?
- As the name suggests, plastic is a man-made product. This means that it does not just occur in nature and can be broken down, but has to be produced from other basic components in various processes.
- But what is plastic made of? Most often it consists of petroleum. This crude oil is first split into different components in refineries. This takes place in the so-called fractionation tower, in which the crude oil is heated to around 400 ° C.
- By heating the oil, the oil will evaporate, i. H. the liquid turns into gas. This steam rises slowly upwards in the fractionation tower and is intercepted by so-called bells on different floors of the tower. The gas becomes liquid again at these bells, which is known as condensation. This process separates the crude oil into petroleum, gasoline and gas oil, among other things.
The material is made from raw gasoline
- The raw gasoline is now required for the production of plastic. This is now broken down into even smaller components in a further chemical process. These components include propylene, ethylene and other compounds made of carbon.
- But plastic also consists of other substances. Various additives are added to the small components of the raw gasoline. Depending on the later use of the plastic, the “additions”, which are called additives in technical jargon, also vary.
- Plasticizers are very often part of these additives. They serve to make the plastic less brittle, more malleable and more robust than the material would be without the plasticizers. Finally, the plastic is usually provided with colored pigments, which allows the end product to appear in a color of your choice.
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