What is plastic made from?

Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen

Plastics are polymers, and are composed primarily of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Polymers are just very long chains of atoms which repeat again and again.

Today most plastics are made from crude oil and natural gas, although they can be also produced from corn and other biomasses. First, refineries process the crude oil to produce fuels, such as gasoline, and many petrochemicals. Petrochemicals then are used by chemical plants to obtain many products, like fertilizers, lubricants, and plastic resins. Plastic resins are, in turn, used to produce many different types of plastics.

From Wikipedea

People experimented with plastics based on natural polymers for centuries. In the nineteenth century they discovered plastics based on chemically modified natural polymers: Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanization of rubber (1839) and Alexander Parkes, English inventor (1813�1890) created the earliest form of plastic in 1855. He mixed pyroxylin, a partially nitrated form of cellulose (cellulose is the major component of plant cell walls), with alcohol and camphor. This produced a hard but flexible transparent material, which he called "Parkesine." The first plastic based on a synthetic polymer was made from phenol and formaldehyde, with the first viable and cheap synthesis methods invented by Leo Hendrik Baekeland in 1909, the product being known as Bakelite. Subsequently poly(vinyl chloride), polystyrene, polyethylene (polyethene), polypropylene (polypropene), polyamides (nylons), polyesters, acrylics, silicones, polyurethanes were amongst the many varieties of plastics developed and have great commercial success.

The development of plastics has come from the use of natural materials (e.g., chewing gum, shellac) to the use of chemically modified natural materials (e.g., natural rubber, nitrocellulose, collagen) and finally to completely synthetic molecules (e.g., epoxy, poly(vinyl chloride), polyethylene).

The limitations of celluloid led to the next major advance, known as "phenolic" or "phenol-formaldehyde" plastics. A chemist named Leo Hendrik Baekeland, a Belgian-born American living in New York state, was searching for an insulating shellac to coat wires in electric motors and generators. Baekeland found that mixtures of phenol (C6H5OH) and formaldehyde (HCOH) formed a sticky mass when mixed together and heated, and the mass became extremely hard if allowed to cool and dry.

Baekeland built pressure vessels to force out the bubbles and provide a smooth, uniform product. He publicly announced his discovery in 1909, naming it "bakelite". It was originally used for electrical and mechanical parts, finally coming into widespread use in consumer goods in the 1920s. When the Bakelite patent expired in 1927, the Catalin Corporation acquired the patent and began manufacturing Catalin plastic using a different process that allowed a wider range of coloring.

Bakelite was the first true plastic. It was a purely synthetic material, not based on any material or even molecule found in nature. It was also the first "thermoset" plastic. Conventional "thermoplastics" can be molded and then melted again, but thermoset plastics form bonds between polymers strands when "cured", creating a tangled matrix that cannot be undone without destroying the plastic. Thermoset plastics are tough and temperature resistant.

Bakelite was cheap, strong, and durable. It was molded into thousands of forms, such as radios, telephones, clocks, and, of course, billiard balls. The U.S. government even considered making one-cent coins out of it when World War II caused a copper shortage.

Phenolic plastics have been largely replaced by cheaper and less brittle plastics, but they are still used in applications requiring its insulating and heat-resistant properties. For example, some electronic circuit boards are made of sheets of paper or cloth impregnated with phenolic resin.

Answer

Thye majority of what we know as plastics used today are mainly made from one major ingredient: oil. The same kind of oil that runs our automobiles and the economy.

ANSWER

What a crock!There are variuos sources both natural and synthetic, silicones,teflon, PVC, etc.

Elementally plastics can contain C,H,O,N,Cl,F,Si,S,& P. The term plastic merely refers to the property of being able to form the material when soft and harden afterwards.

Answer

Really, you should say "polymers" and not "plastics." And the answer really is, what polymer?

Take cellulose acetate--a very popular polymer, used mostly in thin films. It's made from cotton. Some rubbers are made from the sap of a tree. The plastic in your soda bottle is made in part from antifreeze. Silicones are made from sand. Vinyl is made from acetylene.

I really like http://pslc.ws, the Polymer Science Learning Center. Check that site out; they tell you how a lot of popular polymers are made. They wrote it for all grade levels, meaning parts of it are grade school stuff and others are high school stuff. But check it out anyway, because you'll learn a lot.

Answer

In general, plastic is made from crude oil.

First answer by Ksmail. Last edit by Bahar25. Contributor trust: 1 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 63 [recommend question]