Cooking up the perfect plastic
14 Nov 2011 by Evoluted New Media
Scientists have solved a long-standing problem that could revolutionise the way plastics are developed with a high-tech recipe book for cooking up the perfect plastic.
The breakthrough – made by researchers at the University of Leeds and Durham University – will allow experts to create the perfect plastic with specific uses and properties. It will also increase our ability to recycle plastics.
“Plastics are used by everybody, everyday, but until now their production has been effectively guesswork,” said research leader, Dr Daniel Read from the school of mathematics at Leeds. “This breakthrough means that new plastics can be created more efficiently and with a specific use in mind, with benefits to industry and the environment.”
Up until now, industry developed a plastic then found a use for it, or tried hundreds of different recipes to see which worked. This new method – the result of the Microscale Polymer Processing project – could save the manufacturing industry time energy and money.
Mathematical models were used to put together two pieces of computer code. The first predicts one polymers will flow based on the connections between the string-like molecules – macromolecules – they are made from. The second predicts the shape these macromolecules will take when they are created at a chemical level.
The models were enhanced by experiments on ‘perfect polymers’ which were carefully synthesised in the lab of the Microscale Polymer Processing project – a collaboration between industry and academia looking at improving macromolecules.
“After years of trying different chemical recipes and only finding a very few provide useable products, this new science provides industry with a toolkit to bring new materials to market faster and more efficiently,” said Professor Tom McLeish from Durham, who leads the Microscale Polymer Processing project.
McLeish believes the trial and error phase in developing new plastics could now be bypassed, particularly as plastic production is moving from oil-based to sustainable and renewable materials.
“By changing two or three numbers in the computer code, we can adapt all the predictions for new bio-polymer sources,” he said.
Linking models of polymerisation and dynamics to predict branched polymer structure and flow
