Making Plastic Disappear with Piranha Solution
Water bottle companies make plastic bottles, not water.
Plastic bottles are not only one of the main products that lead to plastic pollution, but the water bottling process also releases 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.
Why do we continue to use plastic bottles when we know they're extremely hazardous? Well, they’re cheap. It costs 24 cents to produce 1 kilogram of the plastic used to make bottles — polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
PET is made of aromatic rings linked to linear chains of carbon with ester groups making it extremely hard to break. Learn more about the types of plastics.
We all can agree that plastics are bad for the environment. They kill wildlife in the ocean, cause over-pollution of land and water and cant degrade, so they end up as microplastics in our bodies that can cause serious capillary blockage. In layman terms, that means plastics become super tiny pieces. So small that they have been found in blood, rain, and breastmilk. These tiny pieces (1–1000 microns) can lead to blocks in capillaries (vessels that carry blood to and from your organs) that are 8–10 microns in width.
We can’t stop producing plastic bottles since they're the main source of drinking water in several countries. And whether we like it or not, plastic bottles are a boon as much as they are a bane.
What if we can just make plastic disappear into thin air (quite literally)?
We can’t do it naturally since plastic is a polymer that’s man-made and hence isn't recognized by most bacteria, enzymes, and decomposing agents. But Piranha solution could solve that problem for us.
Piranha solution is a concentrated acidic solution that’s a mix of concentrated sulphuric acid and hydrogen peroxide and is known to dissolve organic compounds instantaneously.
DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME
An oversimplified version of the chemical process that takes place —
- Plastics are mostly made of a combination of Carbon, Oxygen, and Hydrogen
- When you add plastic to the Piranha solution, the sulphuric acid reacts with the bottle and removes all the Hydrogen and Oxygen molecules leaving behind the Carbon
- Carbon residue is black and pretty much can’t do anything by itself
- The hydrogen peroxide from the Piranha solution oxides the remaining carbon and forms Carbon dioxide which vaporizes
And voila. You just made plastic (or any compound with Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen) disappear
Why are people not using this at scale?
- It’s not economically feasible to buy gigantic vats of acid for this process
- Unlike in the suicide squad movie, it’s also not safe to have these vats just lying around
3. This process emits an extremely large amount of Carbon Dioxide, so unless we find a way to keep this carbon from entering the atmosphere by capturing it right when it’s emitted —
