Recycling polystyrene to make styrene
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- čas přidán 10. 09. 2024
- In this video we are recycling polystyrene to make styrene. Polystyrene can be cracked and in this thermal pyrolysis reaction styrene is produced.
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That's how it's done, kids. I once read of a chemist that had a patent for a catalyst, which he couldn't sell or lease. He had a kid who was a newly minted lawyer. The chemist and lawyer made a deal in which the State of New Jersey offered, under contract, to sell, at a minimal cost to the newly formed chemist/lawyer company, what amounted to be empty milk bottles. Truck loads of crushed gallon milk bottles. The company rented a pier on the Jersey shore and set up a pyrolytic converter fitted with the cited catalyst, and like magic, lawyers from other chemical companies started showing up, hats in hand, soliciting the first company to sell those of the second companies products of the first company's rig. It turned out that a converter would have been enough to attract the second batch of lawyers as pyrolylsis, while messy, is famously profitable, but with the cited catalyst was some 30% more efficient in converting to some specific products. Some serious Ka-ching. Last I heard was that the State of New Jersey wanted to renegotiate the first contract for a bigger piece of the pie, in a manner of speaking.
"soliciting the first company to sell those of the second companies products of the first company's rig" this is a mess of a sentence.
Nice! I heard acrylic pyrolysis gives methyl methacrylate as well so that could be interesting. Also the radical mechanisms here are pretty interesting.
I’m thinking about making this stuff too.
❤️
I did that and tried to polymerize it.
Nothing happened, but then I didn't try to distill it or purify it in any way.
Maybe you will have better results.
Your voiceovers are getting alot better! Not implying it was bad before, before was fine but this one was quite good!
I might try this someday, I thought i'd have to buy styrene to make polystyrene or decompose Cinnimic acid...
The voiceovers from 1 year back were a LOT worse. I cringe when I look back but it’s improving day by day.
@@THYZOID I've seen them, it's not bad as you may think, but still a noticeable improvement.
Honestly benzene is one of my favorite chemical to use ant I have used the method to extract benzene from sodium benzoate and it worked and I burned that benzene for fun
well done. I once tried to make styrene by dehydratation of 1-Phenylethanol with H2SO4. I mixed it together, heated and tried to distill styrene. I ended up with black dense mud and not even one drop of styrene. :D
Sounds like the substrate have been "digested" by the hot H2SO4 - although not really an oxidizing acid, sulfuric is a different story at higher temperatures (see "wet oxidation methods"). It might have also formed ethers (by dehydration of the alcohol) and maybe some sulfonated by products...
@@LiborTinka I think it just polymerized. Polymerization of styrene can be activated by acid. It polymerize even if you fart near it... Its just unstable by its nature.
@@humr2346 Note to self: do not eat beans prior to handling liquid styrene.
@@humr2346 Ah I see. Good to know, thanks.
Thank you that you took my video suggestion into consideration! Pyrolysis of various plastics has always been one of my favorite reactions and this video was excellent, lets get this man 10000 subscribers please!
I did this a few years ago.
I was able to re-polymerise it using fiber glassing activator (MEK peroxide) and some mild heating.
The product was hard but brittle, but It had impurities in with the styrene.
Next time I will use some Magnesium Oxide in the pyrolysis retort.
I read in a paper the MgO improves the yield to favor styrene.
hi did you need other heat sources while doing polymerization or catalyst will work by itself?
@@dogodogo5891
To depolymerize the polystyrene, I used a hotplate.
To re-polymerize the liquid, I used a coffee warmer for heat and some MEK peroxide.
The end result was polystyrene , but it was very brittle.
Keep in mind, the yield of styrene is from 40 to 70%.
The rest is benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes.
Also, better polymerization techniques are needed
I have always wanted to try that at such a large scale. Nice video! :)
Thank you! Why haven’t you uploaded new videos for about a year?
Did the same 24 years ago, same setup, only used copper tube. Also did methyl methacrylate, and then methacrylic acid, which was a stinky mistake. Thanks for the video!
From what did you make the methyl methacrylate (plexiglass?) and the corresponding acid?
@@THYZOID Reverse: de-polymerized some pieces of plexiglass by heating it in a can while distilling the monomer, then reacted the monomer with some sodium hydroxide.The problem was that I acidified the resulting salt it in the attic, so the whole house could appreciate the smell of methacrylic acid. Smells sort-of like vomit. Maybe not as bad as butyric acid, but still pretty bad.
Thanks! Do you know if the monomer polymerizes quickly on its own or if it’s fairly stable?
@@THYZOID It was stable, at the time I couldn't make it polymerize. Then I left some in a bottle, and after checking a year later it was all solid.
Good to know thanks!
Now all you need to do is epoxidize the monomer and reflux with an excess of acid, follow that up with distillation and then react the aldehyde with MeNH3 followed by vigorous drying. Then finally finish off by reacting the aldimine with methyl magnesium halide (Grignard reagent).
No. We won’t to that. Also methylamine is MeNH2.
@@THYZOID
Walter White nods in agreement.
amazing try extracting gold from random stuffs you wouldnt expect
If there's another fuel crisis we may have to end up recycling polystyrene to burn the monomer in diesel engines...it's actually a very good fuel.
I love the paintcan DIY. Don't know why I haven't thought of that before.
Did you braze on a tube, or is it even more crude than that? It seems fairly airtight in any case
i just rammed the tube trough a hole after wrapping it in plenty ptfe tape
well done, i need to rty this with some of my degasified styrofoam ive collected in my D-limonene bucket. (probably about 30 coolers and a garbage sack of pellets.
Interesting. At the beginning of the video there's a stain on your table. It looks like the outline of a salamander or lizard. Like it was just drying off and left a dirty imprint...
That’s acetylsalicylic acid
I remember when I was a kid a major drug lab got found because they were buying Styrofoam cups
My friend did alot of research on this subject. He too is a chemist from Germany
can this technology be scaled to do large recycling of polystyrene rubbish?
Yes but it will only be worth it if the energy needed for this procedure is cheap
How can it be converted to benzene?
When you use the paint can for benzene should you be left with quite allot of solid at the end that should be hammered out or have I not run the reaction for long enough?
The solid I was left with was easy to break up and remove
Yeah you're left with quite a bit of solid if your can is a bit small and that makes it harder to get out as well. I did the same thing once and had to use a hammer as well. It's fine though. As long as you weren't still getting good amounts of benzene off from it it's fine and can be stopped and cleaned out. No worries.
Waiting for this
Same
I have a question: I know you should not o this, but I'm just wondering what styrene smells like. Also, thank you for the video, pyrolysis is quite cool and interesting!
+1
It smells somewhat sweet with a hint of burned styrofoam
@@THYZOID Thank you.
@@THYZOID 🤤 delicious 😋
Just open some fiberglass resin or some Bondo.
The use styrene monomer in them.
Poggers!
So unusual to se the final product not be yellow like Ex&F usually gets 😅
Maybe I'm stupid but to me it seemed like the first setup was a "closed apparatus", i.e. the fumes generated by the pyrolysis had nowhere to escape? Or did I just not see a vent in the collectorflask?
It was more or less a sealed system. Any fumes and SO2 went into a gas scrubber
so if were actually using this for fuel and not a chemistry project, what kind of inhibitors do you recommend to prevent polymerization? I expect vitamin c would probably cause more fouling than fresh styrene
I’d recommend BHT
@@THYZOID common food additive, already used as ao-29 at 0.3 % for that exact purpose! So obvious yet never would have thought of it, thanks!
Interesting. When will you make the video about making potassium?
I need some time for that but likely this year. The cesium video might come before making K.
Is it possible to create a homemade photoresist out of this distilled styrene? Since it polymerizes under UV.
it is possible but the question is if it will be good
Nice sehr tolles Video
Nice video as always
i dont quite think ptfe sealant is a good choice at those temperatures :P
It survived so it should be ok. I know about the toxic fumes of ptfe pyrolysis but it didn’t seem to be a problem.
it's the standard seal used in this type of setup. Just take a look at any video showing this or the benzene process. They all use PTFE for the seals. And as you can see from the video, his seals didn't degrade too badly at all. As long as you don't overheat it too much it's fine, and over heating a can of that size would require at least some effort to do so. Just saying. 🙂
@@BackYardScience2000 yeah, i usually just torch stuff like this, benzene or styrene, anything thermal goes red heat for me (as as i thought for him too, like many other youtubers did)
+
THYZOID LABORATORIES If I had to guess, you would probably be turning styrene into benzoic acid.
Definetely not. Thats too mich work for me for a product that can be made a lot easier and cheaper
Do one on ketones
What is the purpose of doing this, why would someone want styrene?
Wait for next Sunday
cool
You could make this into a fuel.
That would be a useless use of such an reagent
Conduct a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the resulting liquid - there is less than 40% styrene. Yeald - bull shit.
Well I managed to convert it to the dibromo product and the stociometry looked to be exactly right (nearly all bromine got consumed and the resulting solution contained only a small amount of bromine). So I can confidently say that this should mostly be made from styrene
@@THYZOID Benzene and its homologues also add bromine well, and the product will contain quite a lot of benzene, with an admixture of naphthalene. Ask why? The benzene core is strong enough, and the polymer chains during depolymerization will break with the formation of unstable radicals, and they will already form coke and benzene. I already checked. But for the full depolymerization of polystyrene - it is enough to dissolve it in toluene and expose it to ultraviolet radiation - you can check it yourself.
Hmm make a different type of plastic if you can.
At 0:28 min you probably meant benzene