How is oil used to make plastic ?

Question

How is oil used to make plastic ?

Answer 1

Plastics are made from long hydrocarbon molecular chains.

Crude oil is a mixture of many different hydrocarbon chains, some of which are very long.

The length of a chain determines the boiling point of a particular hydrocarbon. Methane (CH4)is the smallest and has the lowest boiling point.

By making polymers of a particular chain length and adding an impurity then you can make a plastic.

For example if you add chlorine to a polymer chain then the result is PVC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinyl_c...

Answer 2

Oil is a mixture of multiple hydrocarbons. You get a couple of cool hydrocarbonds from oil that are heavily used in plastics - propylene and ethylene (there are other stuff but let's focus only on these for now). From ethylene comes polythene in many different properties of polymerization (HDPE - for making stuff like milk jugs, LDPE for making more flexible plastic films and LLDPE for nice thin films). Propylene is similar, coming with polypropylene.

And the world of plastic is much more versatile, with one leading to the other - like from propylene, you get vinyl chrloride, which is the feedstock for PVC. And there is tons more but I guess you get the basic idea. The hydrocarbons available in oil (to be specific you can even get propylene or ethylene by breaking some other stuff in oil) are so versatile feedstocks for all kinds of plastic.

Answer 3

crude oil is very thick like tar

and the long chain molecules are what makes plastic

spirit, petrol and diesel are distilled out first