{"id":117787,"date":"2023-10-18T08:00:07","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T05:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/fi\/news\/scientists-turn-plastic-wastes-into-soap\/"},"modified":"2023-10-18T08:00:07","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T05:00:07","slug":"scientists-turn-plastic-wastes-into-soap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/news\/scientists-turn-plastic-wastes-into-soap\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists turn plastic wastes into soap"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mp_wrapper\">\n  <div class=\"mepr-unauthorized-message\">\n    <p>You are unauthorized to view this page.<\/p>\n  <\/div>\n  <div class=\"mepr-login-form-wrap\">\n            \n<div class=\"mp_wrapper mp_login_form\">\n                  <!-- mp-login-form-start -->     <form name=\"mepr_loginform\" id=\"mepr_loginform\" class=\"mepr-form\" action=\"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/login-2\/\" method=\"post\" data-trp-original-action=\"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/login-2\/\">\n            <div class=\"mp-form-row mepr_username\">\n        <div class=\"mp-form-label\">\n                              <label for=\"user_login\">Username<\/label>\n        <\/div>\n        <input type=\"text\" name=\"log\" id=\"user_login\" value=\"\" \/>\n      <\/div>\n      <div class=\"mp-form-row mepr_password\">\n        <div class=\"mp-form-label\">\n          <label for=\"user_pass\">Password<\/label>\n          <div class=\"mp-hide-pw\">\n            <input type=\"password\" name=\"pwd\" id=\"user_pass\" value=\"\" \/>\n            <button type=\"button\" class=\"button mp-hide-pw hide-if-no-js\" data-toggle=\"0\" aria-label=\"Show password\">\n              <span class=\"dashicons dashicons-visibility\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/span>\n            <\/button>\n          <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n            <div>\n        <label><input name=\"rememberme\" type=\"checkbox\" id=\"rememberme\" value=\"forever\" \/> Remember Me<\/label>\n      <\/div>\n      <div class=\"mp-spacer\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n      <div class=\"submit\">\n        <input type=\"submit\" name=\"wp-submit\" id=\"wp-submit\" class=\"button-primary mepr-share-button\" value=\"Log In\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"redirect_to\" value=\"\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117787\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"mepr_process_login_form\" value=\"true\" \/>\n        <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"mepr_is_login_page\" value=\"false\" \/>\n      <\/div>\n    <input type=\"hidden\" name=\"trp-form-language\" value=\"en\"\/><\/form>\n    <div class=\"mp-spacer\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n    <div class=\"mepr-login-actions\">\n        <a\n          href=\"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/login-2\/?action=forgot_password\"\n          title=\"Click here to reset your password\"\n        >\n          Forgot Password        <\/a>\n    <\/div>\n\n      \n    <!-- mp-login-form-end --> \n  <\/div>\n      <\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"smart_content_wrapper\">\n<p>Almost two-thirds of all the plastics ever made now sit in landfills or litter the environment. Even now, only about a tenth of plastic waste gets recycled. Much of what is recycled ends up being low-quality material. It tends to be reused only in things such as park benches. So chemists have been searching for ways to \u201cupcycle\u201d plastic, turning it into more valuable raw materials.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo me, plastic waste basically [is] aboveground crude oil,\u201d says Guoliang Liu. He\u2019s a chemist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. To make valuable chemicals, he says, we don\u2019t always need to \u201cgo deep into the ocean or underground to mine [them] anymore.\u201d\u202fIn fact, this upcycling could offer a truly greener and cleaner way to deal with discarded plastic. To turn plastics into surfactants, Liu and his team developed a special reactor. It carefully heats and condenses plastic into a wax that has short carbon chains. Then they capped the wax molecules with groups of oxygen atoms. They also treated them with an alkaline solution. This processing turned the wax into a surfactant.<\/p>\n<p>Alas, upcycled plastic probably won\u2019t be washing away messes tomorrow. Right now, the Virginia Tech team can make only about a half gram of surfactant at a time. That mass is equal to about one pumpkin seed or one and a half green peas. But Liu\u2019s team is working to scale up the process. If they succeed, they hope to partner with industry to make plastic waste a bit cleaner \u2014 or, should we say, into a cleaner.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.snexplores.org\/article\/upcycle-plastic-trash-soap-chemistry\">Science News Explores<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\/environmental-news-en\/1-418\/\">Scientists turn plastic wastes into soap<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/vastuullisuusuutiset.fi\/fi\">Vastuullisuusuutiset.fi<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[575,761,2416,11022],"class_list":["post-117787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-environmental-news-en","tag-plastic-waste","tag-science","tag-soap"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tietopankki.crnet.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}