Polypropylene Essay

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Research in Sciences Essay Polypropylene Maricela Flores HUM177A November 18, 2014 We live in a time where plastic and plastic products are all around us and are included in our daily lives. Some are advantageous and some are unsafe, but plastic #5: Polypropylene (PP) is a thermoplastic polymer that is versatile and used in a wide variety of applications that can be found in various objects from food containers in your refrigerator, to medicine bottles in your cabinet, to disposable diapers. Polypropylene was first polymerized by a German chemist named Karl Rehn and an Italian chemist named Giulio Natta (Morris, 2005). This was just a start of PP, the next couple years PP was produced commercially. The commercial production of PP began in 1957 in the United States of America and in 1958 in Europe (Karger-Kocsis, 1995). Based on statistics, according to Meran, Ozturk, and Yuksel (2008), they clearly show the quick increase in the consumption of plastics. In the year 1930 the world produced 100,000 tons of plastics, not including rubber and fiber. By 1976, the amount reached 25 million tons. With the advances in technology, the manufacture of the plastics went up to 90 million tons in 1990. Between the years 1990 and 2005, Meran, Ozturk, and Yuksel (2008), found the amount of annual metal intake duplicates once in a year, but plastic intake duplicates every four years. It was observed that 31% of polyethylene and 14% of polypropylene is manufactured. This information is strong and useful to illustrate the amount of plastic that is manufactured in the world. As for thermoplastics, they constitute 85% of consumed plastics (Meran, Ozturk, & Yuksel, 2008). Due to this high percentage, the recycling of thermoplastics and usage of recycled materials are increasing significantly. According to Karian (1999), PP underwent phenomenal growth in production and
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