The project report includes Present Market Position and Expected Future Demand, Market Size, Statistics, Trends, SWOT Analysis and Forecasts. Report provides a comprehensive analysis from industry covering detailed reporting and evaluates the position of the industry by providing insights to the SWOT analysis of the industry.
“Plastic is an organic material which on application of adequate heat and pressure can be caused to flow and take up a desired shape which will be retained when the applied heat and pressure are withdrawn.” Chemically, a polymer is defined as a substance composed of very large molecules. The molecular structure corresponds to a chain composed of many small molecules joined by chemical bonds. One or more types of small molecules, also known as monomers, are incorporated into the polymer as it is synthesized in control conditions.
Basic Ingredient of plastic is-
The major chemical elements making up petroleum are oxygen (O), hydrogen (H), and carbon(C).”
Petroleum is decomposed under heat into gasoline, kerosene, naphtha, light oil, heavy oil, etc. Most plastics use naphtha as main raw material. Naphtha is further decomposed thermally and separated utilizing the difference in the boiling point (temperature at which the phase change from liquid to gas occurs) to form ethylene and propylene, which are the raw materials for plastics. However, many of these gases and liquids are not ready for use as they are.
About “mono” and “poly”
To produce a high-molecular compound, it is necessary to first produce low-molecular compounds and bond them together. This reaction is known as polymerization, the low-molecular compounds as “monomers,” and the high-molecular-weight substance as a ” high-molecular compound” or “polymer.” The word “mono” means “single” while “poly” means “multiple.”
The formation of polymers from monomers uses heat, light, and additives such as enzymes (polymerization initiators). In this way, ethylene and propylene, which are monomers, are polymerized into polyethylene and polypropylene.
Simply stated, the ” high-molecular substances” as referred to by the Japan Industrial Standard mean ” substances with very high-molecular weights synthesized chemically.” Substances are classified into low-molecular, intermediate-molecular, and high-molecular substances according to their molecular weights. For example, the molecular weight of oxygen is 32 and that of sugar is 342.
On the other hand, the molecular weights of rubber and proteins exceed 10000. Natural “high-moleculara?? compounds include, natural resins such as natural rubber and rosin, cellulose, silk, proteins, and many other substances. The substances produced in imitation of these substances are synthetic rubber, synthetic resins, and synthetic fiber. Thus, plastics are high-molecular compounds produced artificially. They are called ” synthetic resin” or simply ” resin” in comparison to natural resin.
The definition of plastics
The Japan Industrial Standard (JIS K 9600-1977) defines “plastics” as “solids artificially formed into useful shapes using high-molecular substances as main raw materials. However, fiber, rubber, paints, and adhesives are excluded.”
Plastics, materials made up of large, organic (carbon-containing) molecules thatcan be formed into a variety of products. The molecules that compose plastics arelong carbon chains that give plastics many of their useful properties. In general,materials that are made up of long, chainlike molecules are called polymers. The word plastic is derived from the words plasticus (Latin for “capable of molding”) and plastikos (Greek “to mold,” or “fit for molding”).
Plastics can be made hard asstone, strong as steel, transparent as glass, light as wood, and elastic as rubber.Plastics are also lightweight, waterproof, chemical resistant, and produced inalmost any color. More than 50 families of plastics have been produced, and newtypes are currently under development.
It is very difficult to realise how important plastics have become to our everyday lives. We always seem to have known these materials, and we tend to take it for granted that they occur every day and all around us, for example in our clothing, the pen that we write with, the chair that we sit on or the wrapping of the food that we eat.
So it is sometimes hard to believe that plastics have only been commonly available for about the last one hundred years. Yet in this time the impact that they have made upon the quality of our lives and on the products that we have access to has been enormous. Plastics give us the possibility of manufacturing well-designed, beautiful products from the very many different types of plastics materials that are commonly available today. Within manufacturing technology there is a very high degree of technological understanding of plastics and a range of sophisticated technological processes that enable us to make them and shape them in numerous ways. This book aims to show you a little of what can be done.
The word plastic itself comes from the Greek word plasticos, which means to be able to be shaped or moulded by heat. As we will see, shaping plastics by using heat is a basic part of nearly all plastics manufacturing processes. Like timbers, which can be divided into hardwoods and softwoods, and metals that can be divided into ferrous and nonferrous metals, plastics can also be divided into categories:
Natural plastics – these are naturally occurring materials that can be said to be plastics because they can be shaped and moulded by heat. An example of this is amber, which is a form of fossilised pine tree resin and is often used in jewellery manufacture.
Semi synthetic plastics – these are made from naturally occurring materials that have been modified or changed but mixing other materials with them. An example of this is cellulose acetate, which is a reaction of cellulose fibre and acetic acid and is used to make cinema film.
Synthetic plastics – these are materials that are derived from breaking down, or ’cracking’ carbon based materials, usually crude oil, coal or gas, so that their molecular structure changes. This is generally done in petrochemical refineries under heat and pressure, and is the first of the manufacturing processes that is required to produce most of our present day, commonly occurring plastics.
Synthetic and semi synthetic plastics can be further divided into two other categories. These two categories are defined by the ways in which different plastics react when heated.
