GreenMONNCS

PVC: Resins, products and recycle code   Following polyethylene and polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is the third most widely used worldwide. In construction, PVC is fast replacing traditional building materials such as rubber, clay, wood, concrete, glass and metal. The first preparation of PVC was in 1935 by a French chemist, Henri Victor Regnault but was patented in 1912 by a German chemist, Freidrich Heinrich August Klatte. The first commercial production was done in 1926 by Waldo Lunsbury Semon while working for the US Company, B. F. Goodrich.   The product of his work is what is known as plasticized PVC today. Polyvinyl chloride is a thermoplastic that is generally white in colour, brittle, solid, odourless and quite popular. Available in pellets and powder form, its versatility cuts across numerous applications such as: Applications of PVC -           water pipes (drinking, waste, irrigation, industrial) -           garden hoses -           roofing and flooring

Plastic is everywhere! Plastic is in everything! Plastic has pervaded every aspect of human existence and is as commonplace as the sand on the seashore. Its benefits are numerous and have been discussed in some detail in the preceding article in the Know Your Plastics Series ( Click here to read ). However, its major disadvantage is improper disposal and recycling of plastics when discarded. To recycle plastic material more effectively and efficiently, one must understand the components and constituents of each plastic-type, known as polymers What is a Polymer? Hermann Staudinger, an organic chemistry professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Zurich in the 1920s is the “Father of Modern Polymer development”. His discoveries in macromolecular chemistry earned him the 1953 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Monomers in a Polymer A polymer is any natural or synthetic substance made of multiple, identical, repetitive units of smaller molecules, AKA monomers, which are bonded tog