Soda Bottles & Trash Bags Could One Day Come From Natural Gas
15th January 2014
The dirty secret of almost anything made out of plastic — from your soda bottle to a trash bag — is that there’s a good chance it was made with ingredients that come from crude oil. A startup named Siluria is looking to swap out that crude oil with natural gas, which could make plastics and chemicals just a little less terrible for the planet.
If you’ve heard of startup Siluria before it’s probably because of the people involved with the company. Former Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy is on the board, the core tech came out of the labs of well-known MIT scientist Angela Belcher, and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s fund also backed the firm. But the six-year-old company could be on the cusp of finally breaking out, thanks to a new partnership with the U.S. arm of massive Brazilian petrochemical company Braskem.
January 15th, 2014 at 11:31
Win The Future?!?
How does making plastic from natural gas make anything better compared to making it from oil????
Organic chem 101: All hydrocarbons are just various arrangements of carbon and hydrogen. Occasionally we throw in some oxygen or nitrogen or maybe even sulfur to give the stuff particular properties. Crude oil is nothing more than a broad mixture of hydrocarbons. Refineries separate those molecules, then either split them up or join them together to make the products and raw materials (like ethylene for making polyethylene bottles) they produce. If you start with vegetable oils (for Greenwashing), the same process is followed. It doesn’t change the final product.
Honestly, the people who think they are saving the planet with pop-sci make me blow a gasket.