Discover how to make diamonds from plastic bottles
California: Scientists in America have discovered a way to make diamonds from plastic bottles. With the help of modern technology, it will now be possible to help prevent waste by turning plastic waste into fine diamonds.
Researchers at the SLCA National Accelerator Laboratory in the US state of California were trying to replicate the diamond rain process that occurs in the solar system’s planets Uranus and Neptune.
Because the temperature of these ice balls is much lower than Earth’s atmosphere and the pressure is millions of times higher, these factors are thought to break down the hydrocarbon compounds and then the intense pressure turns the carbon into diamonds. Later it rains.
To mimic this process, the scientists shone a very powerful laser on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, which they saw forming a diamond-like structure. It is a hydrocarbon material commonly used in single-use packaging.
Dominik Cross, a physicist and professor at the University of Rostock, said that PET plastic has the perfect balance of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen to mimic the activity on these ice planets.
Scientists know that compounds made of hydrogen and carbon exist 8,046 kilometers below the surface of Uranus and Neptune.
These compounds include methane, which has four hydrogen atoms attached to one carbon. This is why Neptune appears blue.
In a 2017 study, the SLAC team successfully simulated the precipitation of diamonds for the first time by firing an optical laser at polystyrene.
Since polystyrene contains only hydrogen and carbon, it only mimics the structure of methane.
