What are the raw materials needed in order to produce a polymer?
The most important primary sources of synthetic polymers are crude oil, natural gas and, to a minor extent, coal. Because all are primarily fuels rather than sources of materials, the manufacture of polymers is susceptible to changes in price or supply.
What is the main material included in polymers?
The Structure of Polymers Many common classes of polymers are composed of hydrocarbons, compounds of carbon and hydrogen. These polymers are specifically made of carbon atoms bonded together, one to the next, into long chains that are called the backbone of the polymer.
What are the types of polymer materials?
There are 3 principal classes of polymers – thermoplastics, thermosets, and elastomers. Differentiation between these classes is best defined by their behaviour under applied heat. Thermoplastic polymers can be either amorphous or crystalline. They behave in a relatively ductile manner but often have low strength.
What is the easiest way to process a polymer material?
1. Methods of polymer processing. The melt processing, or also called mechanical mixing/blending, is the most economical and fast method for the production of conducting polymers.
What is the most common polymer?
Polyethylene is the most commonly produced plastic polymer (Table 1) and this is reflected in what is typically found in the environment. For example, barnacles collected from the North Pacific were found to contain 58 % polyethylene, 5 % polypropylene, and 1 % polystyrene microparticles 49 . …
How is plastic made step by step?
Plastics are made from raw materials like natural gas, oil or plants, which are refined into ethane and propane. Ethane and propane are then treated with heat in a process called “cracking” which turns them into ethylene and propylene. These materials are combined together to create different polymers.
What is the polymer process?
Polymerization, any process in which relatively small molecules, called monomers, combine chemically to produce a very large chainlike or network molecule, called a polymer. The monomer molecules may be all alike, or they may represent two, three, or more different compounds.
Which one of the following is not a synthetic polymer?
Cellulose is not a synthetic polymer.