00:00 most plastic water and soda bottles are

00:02 made from a polymer called PE T which

00:05 stands for polyethylene terephthalate
00:07 it's a very useful and versatile plastic
00:10 but every year millions of tons of it
00:13 are produced and it represents a huge
00:15 amount of waste a small portion of it is
00:18 recycled though and it's generally done
00:20 in two main ways
00:21 either mechanically or chemically when
00:24 it's done mechanically it's collected
00:26 shredded cleaned up and melted then from
00:30 a liquid it can be extruded spun into
00:32 fibres and so on in general though it
00:35 can't be used to remake drink bottles
00:37 because there's often contamination that
00:39 makes it not safe for food when it's
00:42 recycled chemically it isn't just melted
00:44 and reshaped and it's instead degraded
00:47 these degradation products can then be
00:49 used to build into new polymers I found
00:52 a book that outlined two common chemical
00:54 methods and I wanted to try them out in
00:56 the first one it's used to make
00:58 polyurethane foam for things like
01:00 insulation and in the other one it's
01:02 used to make fiberglass resin for this
01:04 video I'm gonna be focusing on the
01:06 polyurethane one but in the future I
01:08 will cover the other procedure as a
01:11 quick side note for those of you who are
01:13 waiting the last part of my prescient
01:15 blue series should be out in the next
01:17 couple weeks I originally wanted it to
01:19 be this video but I ran into some
01:21 problems that ended up delaying it in
01:23 any case for the first part of this
01:25 project these are all the chemicals that
01:27 I used the ones labeled Sigma were
01:29 purchased well from Sigma the two black
01:32 ones were from ebay and the castor oil
01:34 was from my local pharmacy besides the
01:37 chemicals I of course also needed a
01:39 plastic bottle pretty much all water and
01:42 soda bottles should work but it is a
01:44 good idea to check that it's actually PE
01:46 tea this is very easy to do by just
01:49 looking for the recycling number and it
01:51 should either say one or sometimes it's
01:53 even just literally written P et I took
01:56 off the label cleaned off all the glue
01:58 and then chopped it into pieces using
02:00 scissors I also waded out and in total
02:02 there were 22 point five grams of
02:05 plastic hair into a flask I added some
02:07 boiling chips that had got by smashing a
02:10 porcelain plate then I added all the
02:12 plastic which
02:13 ended up kind of being a pain because
02:15 the pieces kept getting stuck in the
02:17 neck this was totally my fault though
02:19 and it was just because I didn't cut
02:21 them up small enough in any case when it
02:24 was eventually all inside
02:25 I added magnesium acetate and manganese
02:28 carbonate which were the catalyst for
02:30 the reaction then on top of all of this
02:32 I poured in 15 milliliters of diethylene
02:35 glycol to get the reaction going
02:38 I needed to heat it to its boiling point
02:40 so I placed the heating mantle below it
02:42 and above it I attached a condenser
02:44 column to prevent any vapors from
02:46 escaping I cranked on the heating and
02:48 over the course of an hour the plastic
02:51 slowly disappeared
02:53 P et plastic is a long repeating chain
02:56 of ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid
02:58 groups all bound together by ester bonds
03:01 and what i'm doing here is breaking
03:03 apart this chain in a process called
03:06 transesterification with strong heating
03:08 and in the presence of the manganese
03:10 catalyst the diethylene glycol starts to
03:13 attack the PE T it competes with the
03:15 ethylene glycol for the terephthalic
03:17 acid and it's able to kick it out and
03:19 replace it this makes a new ester bond
03:22 between the terephthalic acid and the
03:23 diethylene glycol and the PE T chain is
03:26 broken at this point as the reaction
03:29 continues this happens in more and more
03:31 places and the polymer is slowly
03:33 degraded after about an hour I took away
03:36 the heating mantle to check its progress
03:38 as it cooled a bit it became cloudy
03:41 because some of the plastic was
03:42 separating from the solution this told
03:45 me that the polymer chains were still
03:47 too big so I boiled it for another hour
03:49 this time it cooled all the way to room
03:52 temperature without any cloudiness for
03:55 the next step I had to get rid of the
03:56 manganese catalyst and I was originally
03:58 planning to filter it however I found
04:01 that it was a lot easier to just reheat
04:03 the resin to make it a bit more liquidy
04:05 and then to pour it off into another
04:07 flask by doing this carefully and slowly
04:09 I was pretty much able to separate out
04:12 all of it when it was all in the new
04:14 flask I let it fully cool to room
04:16 temperature then I poured in seventy 7.4
04:20 grams of caster oil and I added a stir
04:22 bar I tried to set up my stir plate and
04:25 to mix this all together but I ran into
04:27 some problems the sir bar that I used
04:30 was too big and the mixture was way too
04:32 thick so it kind of just got stuck and
04:34 did nothing I thought that maybe it
04:37 would work with a smaller one so I took
04:39 this one out using a magnet and dropped
04:41 in the other one not only was this swap
04:44 kind of a mess but it also didn't pay
04:46 off at all it was actually able to spin
04:48 this time but it was so slow that there
04:50 was no hope in mixing anything I ended
04:53 up just having to do it the
04:54 old-fashioned way which was how I should
04:56 have done it from the beginning when I
04:58 felt that I had a relatively even
05:00 mixture I put it back on the stand then
05:03 into this
05:04 I poured my entire bottle of tall alene
05:06 to four die
05:07 Oh cyanate or just TDI for short just as
05:11 a quick safety note TDI is relatively
05:13 toxic especially by inhalation so it's
05:16 really important to work in a
05:18 well-ventilated area anyway right after
05:20 adding it I quickly swirled it around
05:23 then about 30 seconds later when it
05:26 looked nice and even I put it back on
05:28 the stand what was good this time was
05:30 that the isocyanate actually thinned it
05:32 out enough that the stir bar was able to
05:35 work over the next 20 minutes or so the
05:38 temperature slowly rose and it started
05:40 to bubble the TDI has two isocyanate
05:43 groups and each of them can react with
05:46 an alcohol to make a urethane the castor
05:48 oil that was added is almost entirely a
05:51 triglyceride of rice and oleic acid and
05:53 it can react in three places also each
05:56 fragment of the de polymerized PE tea
05:58 can react on either end with all these
06:02 ingredients added together the castor
06:04 oil and the PE tea fragments start
06:06 attacking the TDI this builds a new
06:09 polymer chain containing many urethane
06:11 groups and it's generally referred to as
06:13 a polyurethane an excess of TDI was used
06:16 here though so it didn't fully
06:18 polymerize and most of the strands
06:20 didn't get very long a lot of them also
06:22 have free isocyanate groups on the end
06:25 and you'll see in a bit why that's
06:27 important
06:27 all the foaming that's happening here is
06:30 from another reaction between the
06:31 isocyanate and water the water attacks
06:34 the isocyanate which leads to the
06:36 formation of an amine and carbon dioxide
06:39 gas the aiming that forms can then
06:41 attack another isocyanate and polymerize
06:44 things further this reaction doesn't
06:46 make urethane bonds though and it
06:48 instead makes dye substituted ureas one
06:52 final thing that i think is important to
06:53 talk about is why I even added the
06:55 castor oil it didn't mention it at all
06:58 in the procedure and I couldn't find any
07:00 info online but I think it's because the
07:03 D polymerize PE T alone just makes bad
07:05 quality polyurethane the phone made from
07:08 castor oil is a much higher quality
07:10 though so I think in industry the
07:13 general idea is to just use the recycled
07:15 PE T as a cheap additive to cut down on
07:18 cost when it's kept in relatively low
07:20 percentages
07:21 maybe around 10 or 15% it'll still give
07:24 a high quality foam but it's just
07:26 cheaper to make as the reaction
07:28 continued the temperature kept rising
07:30 and it eventually peaked at 86 C when
07:34 this happened the flask was placed into
07:36 a vegetable oil bath that I had pre
07:38 heated to 120 see the increase in
07:41 temperature quickly kick-started some
07:43 more bubbling but it wasn't nearly as
07:45 vigorous as before I kept it here for
07:47 about an hour and then they took it out
07:49 of the bath and I put it in some cold
07:51 water
07:51 in hindsight though while it was still
07:53 hot I should have poured it into a
07:55 beaker the cooled resin was extremely
07:58 thick and it got completely stuck in the
08:00 flask
08:07 to get it out I had to invert it in a
08:09 beaker and blast it with my heat gun it
08:12 slowly goood its way out of the flask
08:14 and I thought that it looked like really
08:16 thick honey
08:17 after several minutes of working at it
08:19 it was all eventually out so I got rid
08:22 of the flask sealed the top with some
08:24 plastic wrap and the pre polymer was now
08:27 ready however before I tried making the
08:29 phone with it I'm just gonna give a
08:31 quick shout out to Skillshare for
08:33 sponsoring this video
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08:36 community that offers lessons on almost
08:38 everything from drawing to running a
08:40 business signing up for premium cost
08:42 less than ten dollars a month and it
08:44 gives you unlimited access to all their
08:46 classes which at this point is over
08:48 twenty one thousand in one of my recent
08:50 videos
08:51 the one on Prussian blue I made my own
08:54 oil paint and I attempted to use it as I
08:57 expected I wasn't very good but it
08:59 genuinely made me interested in learning
09:01 how to paint and to draw in general I've
09:03 been using Skillshare for the past week
09:06 or so to do this and so far I honestly
09:08 really liked it I personally think that
09:11 I've improved quite a bit and in a
09:13 future video if you notice that my
09:14 drawing and stuff isn't terrible well
09:17 this is the reason why so with that
09:19 being said if you're interested in
09:21 learning some new things and supporting
09:23 my channel at the same time you should
09:24 definitely try out Skillshare what's
09:27 also great is that the first 500 people
09:29 who sign up using my personalized link
09:32 will get a two month free trial anyway
09:34 with that being said let's get back to
09:37 making the foam to do this I needed a
09:39 few ingredients and they're all shown
09:41 here the first step was to make a
09:43 buffered catalyst solution by adding
09:45 seven grams of diethyl amino ethanol
09:48 followed by 10 mils of 10 percent
09:50 hydrochloric acid I swirled it around a
09:53 bit to really mix it up and then I
09:55 placed it on the side in a plastic cup I
09:58 weighed out about 5 grams of the pre
10:00 polymer and in the beaker on the right I
10:02 prepared the catalyst mixture I added
10:05 about half a mil of water two drops of
10:07 silicone oil and point one seven five
10:10 mils of the buffered catalyst that I
10:12 just made with everything added I gave
10:14 it a quick mixing and I dumped it into
10:17 the pre polymer
10:18 I then stirred it around for a couple
10:20 minutes and it slowly got whiter and
10:22 whiter due to the production of co2 gas
10:25 when I felt like it was evenly mixed I
10:27 took out the spatula and I let the
10:30 reaction do its thing the initial
10:32 reaction was between water and some of
10:34 the unreacted eyes of cyanate groups
10:36 which converted them to a means it also
10:39 produced co2 gas which caused it to
10:41 slowly puff up these a means then went
10:44 on to attack other isocyanates forming
10:46 urea linkages this caused the polymer
10:49 chains to slowly increase in size and
10:51 for it to eventually solidify this
10:54 combination of co2 production and
10:56 polymerization is how a lot of
10:58 polyurethane foams are made when it was
11:00 done I thought it was going to be
11:02 impossible to get out of the cup but it
11:04 was actually quite easy
11:05 I tried jamming my thumb into it and it
11:12 seemed relatively tough but then it just
11:15 kind of exploded I took one of the
11:18 pieces and crushed it in my hand and it
11:20 easily fell apart into a powder okay so
11:24 now that I knew my foam actually worked
11:26 I wanted to try molding it into
11:28 something so I whipped up a relatively
11:30 large batch and started putting it into
11:32 some silicone molds I just bought the
11:35 one on the Left from Amazon but I made
11:37 the one on the right myself using a
11:39 silicone kit at the bottom of it there's
11:41 an imprint of a caffeine molecule and I
11:44 wanted to see if it would turn out when
11:46 it was all transferred over I started a
11:49 time-lapse and I waited for about 30
11:51 minutes when it was done I started by de
11:54 molding the caffeine one and I saw that
11:56 it kind of worked it was actually able
11:59 to get in and mold the molecule but when
12:01 I took it out a portion of it just got
12:04 stuck inside despite this though I still
12:07 kind of thought that it was cool
12:10 I then moved on to D bolding the other
12:12 pieces the first one didn't have much to
12:15 work with but the other three had a lot
12:17 of excess foam so I was able to shape
12:20 them using a razor blade
12:33 in the end this was the final result and
12:36 I was pretty happy with how it all
12:38 turned out although the majority of the
12:40 reaction was over it can take up to a
12:42 month or longer for the polyurethane to
12:44 fully cure because of this drink testing
12:47 it right after making it wasn't really
12:49 fair and it doesn't show the true
12:51 strength of the polymer so I waited a
12:53 couple months and then tested it again
12:55 and the results were very different I
12:58 tried as hard as I could to jab my
13:00 finger into it and then to crush it in
13:02 my hand but basically nothing happened I
13:04 also tried flattening it but that didn't
13:07 really work either so I just resorted to
13:09 smashing it it was able to take several
13:11 good hits and still kind of stay
13:13 together the foam here was definitely
13:15 way stronger and it really showed me why
13:18 it was important to let things cure
13:20 anyway I think that's about it for this
13:22 project one thing I want you to keep in
13:24 mind though is that this was just one
13:26 method of recycling PE t-to polyurethane
13:29 and there are a whole bunch of other
13:31 ways that it could be done
13:32 it's possible to use many different
13:34 catalysts solvents and even another
13:37 alcohol instead of castor oil a lot of
13:40 these changes though will alter the
13:42 final properties of the polyurethane for
13:44 example it's possible to make a foam
13:46 that's instead soft and spongy that can
13:48 be used for things like cushions the
13:51 foaming process can even be inhibited
13:53 altogether so it instead forms a dense
13:55 solid that can either be rigid or
13:57 flexible it's an incredibly versatile
14:00 family of polymers and I think I'm gonna
14:02 try exploring it in a bit more detail in
14:04 a future video and one other thing that
14:07 I might try is redoing this prep but
14:09 without adding the castor oil I honestly
14:12 really don't know how it'll turn out and
14:14 I'm really curious to see what will
14:16 happen
14:18 as usual a big things goes out to all my
14:21 supporters on patreon everyone who
14:23 supports me can see my videos at least
14:25 24 hours before I post them to YouTube
14:28 also everyone on patreon can directly
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14:41 [Music]