Wash the world. Scientists learned how to turn plastic waste into soap

According to Science News Explores, plastic waste has become a real threat to life on Earth; microplastic particles have already been found in groundwater, animals, fish and human organs, and a garbage plastic bag was discovered in the deepest point of the Earth’s oceans.

Scientists have been trying to find effective ways to effectively clean the planet of plastic for decades. And it looks like there’s finally light at the end of this tunnel. New research has discovered a technology that could help not only recycle plastic but also turn it into something valuable.

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Surfactants are chemicals with particularly cool properties. Essentially, they have the capacity to bind normally immiscible materials such as oil and water. This makes them a key material in the production of dozens of products that we can easily find in our homes. These include detergents, soaps and lubricants. Now researchers have discovered a technology that can turn previously used plastic into surfactants.

Today, nearly two-thirds of all plastic produced on the planet ends up in landfills or polluting the environment. Even today with the advancement of technology only 10% of plastic waste can be recycled and even then most of the plastics recycled are not of the best quality.

In a new study, chemists are focusing on finding a way to “recycle” plastic and turn it into a more valuable raw material. According to study co-author Guoliang Liu, a chemist at Virginia Tech, he and his team considered plastic waste to be “terrestrial crude oil.”

Today, we no longer need to go deep into the ocean or underground to produce valuable chemicals, we can actually focus on recycling plastic. In this case, there will also be a side effect of more environmentally friendly and cleaner processing of plastic waste.

The most common types of plastic used today are polyethylene and polypropylene; They consist of very long chains of tens of thousands of bonded carbon atoms. The team notes that surfactants consist mainly of linked carbon chains, but with much shorter chains. Additionally, the surfactant chains are covered with groups of atoms that attract water.

In the research, Liu and his team developed a special reactor that heats the plastic thoroughly, condenses it, and turns it into wax with short carbon chains. After that, they capped the wax molecules with groups of oxygen atoms and then treated them with an alkaline solution. This process converted the wax into a surfactant.

Then the scientists added some dye and sweetener; As a result, they were able to create small pieces of soap. Unfortunately, this technology still needs to be developed, because so far scientists have only been able to produce half a gram of surfactant at a time, the size of a pumpkin seed.

But Liu and his team are working to expand the process, so there is hope that scientists will soon be able to fully rid the Earth of polluting plastic.

Previously Focus He wrote that scientists have discovered that biodegradable plastic is just as dangerous as regular plastic.