Plastics Can Now Be Made Without Using Crude Oil

Millions of kilograms of plastics are produced around the world every single day. In addition to being disposed of improperly, and polluting the environment, plastic is also a material based heavily on crude oil. Its main raw material is ethene, a compound of which some 130 million kilograms are produced every single year. But crude-oil production is beginning to peak, and reserves will thankfully be depleted soon. Researchers in the Netherlands have come up with a solution to this problem, and developed a mechanism of producing ethene using natural gas.

The finding is remarkable for two reasons – it eliminates oil dependency, and holds the promise that, one day, biogas could be used for the same job as well. Dutch researcher Tymen Tiemersma is the main author behind the new investigation. The expert managed to find an ingenious solution to a problem that had prevented other researchers from cracking the riddle of using natural gas for ethene production. Generally, converting the gas into this compound is a process that generates a tremendous amount of heat that cannot be easily dealt with.

The process is therefore tremendously energy-intensive and expensive, which means that it cannot be applied at a large scale. But natural gas is also produced to create a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen called syngas, whose production process requires large amounts of heat. So, Tiemersma thought that he should combine the two processes together, to obtain syngas and ethene at the same time. He then proceeded to develop the necessary mechanisms for this to happen, and discovered that the answer was fairly simple and lay in a particle that acted like a catalyst for the reaction he was trying to obtain.

Natural gas, one of the three main fossil fuels alongside oil and coal, is still present in large quantities around the world, which means that, in the future, it may be used more efficiently for producing plastics. But the possible applications for the new technological process do not stop here. It may be possible to employ this technique in powering electrical vehicles, or in producing fertilizers needed for agriculture. Tiemersma is currently working on developing a proof-of-concept study for the new catalyst, PhysOrg reports.