13th August 2013 A greener, more sustainable source of ingredients for widely used plastics A new process can convert a wide variety of vegetable and animal fats and oils – ranging from lard to waste cooking oil – into a key ingredient for making plastics that currently comes from petroleum, scientists say. Their report on the first-of-its-kind process appears in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. Douglas Neckers and Maria Muro-Small explain that many of the plastics found in hundreds of everyday products begin with a group of chemical raw materials, termed olefins, that come from petroleum. They include ethylene, propylene and butadiene, which are building blocks for familiar plastics like polyethylene, polyester, polyvinyl chloride and polystyrene. The scientists sought a more sustainable alternative source of olefins.
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