It is difficult for modern man to imagine life without plastic
Silk and billiards for the people
It seems incredible, but the industrial revolution in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century took place using exclusively the gifts of nature in their if not pristine, then slightly processed form. Scientists of that time were mostly learning the properties of existing metals, minerals, and chemical elements – and that was enough to create all the inventions of the era from the typewriter to the car.
The first steps towards the polymer industry were Charles Goodyear's discovery of the vulcanization reaction – the transformation of natural rubber into rubber when combined with sulfur and heated – and Anselme Payen's determination of the formula of cellulose. Both events occurred in 1838. One made it possible to obtain a synthetic material from existing natural material, significantly superior to the prototype in most characteristics, and the other allowed understanding the chemical nature of this process and then repeating it on other substances, since the structure of all polymers is essentially identical. These are identical groups of atoms (monomers) linked together.
The first to use these properties were the same Charles Goodyear (founder of the eponymous company, a major manufacturer of automobile tires) and Alexander Parkes, the creator of the first industrial polymer – celluloid – who was unable to give his invention a commercial component. This was accomplished by John Hyatt, who in 1869 began covering billiard balls with celluloid, which had previously been made from ivory.
The next introduction of polymers into industry was made in 1891 by Hilaire de Chardonnet, when he proposed a method for obtaining commercially usable synthetic silk (viscose), many times cheaper than natural silk. The first chemical fiber appeared. In fact, cost was the only factor by which new products from polymers could compete with traditional ones – they had no other advantages.
War as a driver of progress
A breakthrough was the invention in the mid-1900s of Bakelite – a phenol-formaldehyde resin from which products of any shape and size could be quickly manufactured. Unlike celluloid, Bakelite withstood heating and had good electrical insulating properties. The appearance of the new material coincided with the mass spread of electricity, and Bakelite products began to be widely used in electrical engineering. Bakelite became the first polymer whose production began in Russia in 1916.
Shortly before World War I, a new revolutionary product was introduced to the market – cellophane, the first flexible and transparent packaging material in history. It began to be produced in France, but the spread of this film to the masses began after the DuPont company opened its own cellophane production in the USA in 1924. This allowed the company to use its capacities for the production of nitrocellulose, which during the war was used to manufacture explosives. At the same time, PVC began to gain popularity, initially used for purely technical needs (cable insulation), but already in the 1930s more complex products, such as pipes, began to be made from it.
Military needs, which drove the entire chemical technology forward in the late 19th – early 20th centuries, led to the emergence of two more outstanding synthetic materials: synthetic rubber and plexiglass. Although tire manufacturers had no particular complaints about natural rubber, it remained a “colonial commodity” with a very limited number of suppliers. In 1932, industrial production of synthetic rubber began for the first time in the USSR, using food-grade ethanol as raw material. Soon the USSR was joined by Germany and the USA. The new product made it possible to provide the army with tires even under conditions of complete economic blockade and the destruction of world trade.
As for plexiglass (polymethyl methacrylate), invented back in 1877, it waited for commercialization for half a century until aviation became its consumer, needing a lighter and safer substitute for ordinary glass.
World War II and the accompanying technological race gave the world another new material – nylon (polyamide fiber). For a long time it did not find mass application until it began to be used to make parachutes, which were significantly stronger than ordinary ones and did not require the scarce silk and hemp of wartime. The new material pleased the military and began to be widely used in the production of various equipment and uniforms.
Synthetic pleasures
The golden age of polymers came in the post-war years of consumer boom. The development of oil refining sharply reduced the cost of producing many petrochemicals, but bringing products made from them to market required great effort. Two classic examples are the same nylon and polyethylene.
Since the need for parachutes decreased after the war, polyamide fiber manufacturers again turned to the consumer market. As a result, DuPont, which had once brought cellophane to the masses, decided to resume the expensive advertising campaign begun in the pre-war years to commercially promote textile products made of nylon. The “nylon hysteria” of the 1950s-1960s shows that with a certain level of marketing manipulation, the consumer's common sense turns off – enthusiasts wore nylon shirts even in the heat. Later, the company introduced a number of other synthetic fibers to the market: Dacron (polyester fiber), Lycra (polyurethane), and others.
The promotion of polyethylene into mass production is traditionally attributed to another invention of dubious usefulness – the hula hoop. After a long advertising campaign and marketing in 1958, American and then European consumers began to buy the novelty en masse. This allowed polyethylene manufacturers to quickly commercialize their product, accustom consumers to the new material, and later to more practical items made from it, such as plastic bottles and plastic bags.
Be that as it may, by the early 1960s, polymer materials had become the main driving force behind the development not only of the chemical industry, but of industry as a whole. In the USSR in 1958, a course was set for a catch-up 'chemicalization of the national economy,' which was to largely ensure the industrial production of new polymer materials. Just as in the 1920s electricity was the symbol of progress and modernity in the USSR, in the 1950s and 1960s synthetics played this honorable role among other attributes. However, the polymer euphoria was global – over the 1950s-1960s, world production of plastics increased 20-fold.
Making Everything from Nothing
The confident advance of polymers on traditional materials on all fronts continued until the 1970s, when the environmental movement began to gain strength in the West. Due to the massive use of polymers, an acute waste disposal problem arose – polymers practically did not decompose on their own, emitted carcinogens when burned, and their reuse was not always possible.
Nevertheless, 'polymer revolutions,' albeit on a smaller scale, continued into the 1980s, and stricter environmental requirements sometimes not only limited the development of the polymer industry, but also moved it forward. Thus, the need for increased energy efficiency in the 1980s led to the spread of new insulation materials, such as XPS boards (extruded polystyrene foam). In the same years, the invention of compact discs sharply increased demand for the polycarbonate used to manufacture them, and the mass distribution of personal computers and office equipment required new styrene copolymers for housings and compounds for electronic boards. Besides electronics, other major consumers of polymers since the 1970s were the automotive and aviation industries, where they were increasingly used for finishing car interiors and passenger liners.
At the same time, if at the dawn of the polymer era manufacturers had to invent areas of commercial use for the obtained substances, which took years, if not decades, over time the roles changed. Now consumers make new demands on polymers, and their manufacturers try to obtain materials with a predetermined set of properties that no known compound possesses. Therefore, without the emergence of new, including composite, materials based on polymers, the technological progress of recent decades would hardly have been possible.
Point of No Return
Be that as it may, environmental pressure on the polymer industry is gaining momentum. This is quite natural, given the growing attention to environmental protection, human health, and improving the quality of life. The first victim back in the 1990s was PVC, when it was discovered that some products made from it could emit residual vinyl chloride, and when burned, dioxins. As a result, the use of this material for food packaging and drinking water supply was significantly restricted.
Later, polystyrene and especially bottle-grade PET were added to the list of dangerous polymers, which can emit residual aromatic compounds. In the early 2000s, the carcinogenic properties of Teflon, used for decades to make non-stick coatings, were identified, and it can be confidently stated that its use in this capacity has come to an end. In recent years, an increasing number of countries have imposed restrictions on the use of plastic bags, driven not by medical but exclusively by environmental and economic considerations.
Does this mean that the age of polymers is coming to an end? Hardly. With modern standards and volumes of global consumption, there is often simply no substitute for polymers. For example, virtually all of the growth in global fiber consumption over the past twenty years has been provided by chemical fibers. Unlike natural ones, they do not require a reduction in farmland occupied by food crops. It is also obvious that the massive use of other renewable resources, such as cardboard, instead of polymers, given the current population of the planet, will quite quickly lead to their banal depletion. Moreover, the environmental benefits of 'naturalization' are not always obvious. For instance, a hypothetical rejection of plastic bottles in favor of glass ones would lead to significantly higher fuel consumption for their transportation and, as a result, greater greenhouse gas emissions.
Ordered to Go Green
It is obvious that abandoning polymers, despite all their shortcomings, is completely impossible. The solution to the problems lies in a different plane. If over the past decades chemists have learned to obtain compounds with almost any properties, then developing biodegradable polymers has not been a problem for them either; these are being increasingly introduced in the West, although their market share will not exceed 1% for a long time.
Recycling of 'traditional' polymer waste and increasing the useful life of plastic products are not critically complex. The problem is solved even for such a material as rubber. In Europe, the same truck tire goes through two or three cycles of operation, after each of which a new tread is applied. When the resource is finally exhausted, the tire is recycled into road pavement material. However, significant technological limitations that would allow making a 'long-lasting' tire that would need to be changed every eight to ten years rather than every three to four years have not existed for a long time either. It is just unclear what tire companies will do then.
In a word, all current polymer problems are solvable. And although a synthetic home will never become 'natural', making it comfortable and safe is not that difficult. It is enough to have the desire of the inhabitants.
Vlas RYAZANOV.
Expert <\/strong><\/p>