© 2020 – 2023 AEA3 WEB | AEAƎ United Kingdom News
AEA3 WEB | AEAƎ United Kingdom News
News

US scientists turn old plastic into soap after fireside inspiration

Team converts polyethylene into fatty acids, soap’s main ingredient, but say it is not panacea for plastic pollution

Scientists have discovered a method to give new life to old plastic – by converting it into soap.

Plastics are chemically similar to fatty acids, which are one of the main ingredients in soap. For Guoliang Liu, an associate professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech and author of the paper published in the journal Science, this similarity suggested it should be possible to convert polyethylene into fatty acids, and then into soap. The problem was size: molecularly, plastics are very large, about 3,000 carbon atoms long, whereas fatty acids are much smaller.

Continue reading…

Related posts

Researchers one step closer to growing decaffeinated coffee beans

AEA3

More than 40 MPs likely to benefit from scrapping of 45p tax rate

AEA3

Relatives of wounded angry about return of Plymouth gunman’s licence

AEA3

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This