Synthetic Resins and Plastics

The emergence of the synthetic resins and plastics industry from primitive beginnings a century ago to an international multibillion dollar per year industry today has profoundly changed the way people live. Plastics can perform in ways that are not possible with traditional materials and therefore have become an essential component in our technologically based society. For many applications, such as videotape and heart valves, plastics are the only feasible material. In the United States alone, 61.5 billion lb of resins were sold in 1990. The upward trend in U.S. production of resins is illustrated in Fig. 19.1. The expectation of continued consumer demand, as well as industry profits, supports a large research and development effort that promises even better materials for the future. 

Though most plastic and resin products are derived from petroleum, they account for less than 3 percent by weight of total consumption of oil and gas for both material and energy consumption. The amount of energy required 

The commercial history of synthetic resins and plastics can be traced to about 1869, when John Wesley Hyatt and his brother Isaiah, who were seeking a substitute for ivory, developed a practical process for converting cellulose nitrate into useful products. It was mixed with camphor and molded into dentures, billiard balls, toothbrushes, combs, dolls, and collars. This material, which was called celluloid, was one of the developments that made the early motion picture industry possible, as it also could be cast into transparent films of good optical quality. Because of its flammability and poor dur- 

During the first decade of the twentieth century, Leo Baekeland developed the first practical process for making molded objects from phenol-formaldehyde resins. The company he formed was named General Bakelite Co. and he called his product bakelite. The development of these early materials was largely an art because very little was known about the chemistry and physical changes that led to the final products. In the mid-1920s Hermann Staudinger hypothesized that 

Though the words plastics and resins sometimes are used interchangeably, workers in the polymer industry generally make a distinction between them. Originally resin referred to the natural exudates of plants and trees such as rosin, copal, amber, elemi, kaure, manila, mastic, and batu. Later the word also became to be used for resin-like substances of animal origin such as shellac and casein. 

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Phthalic anhydride is a significant commercial product. Its main area of application is in synthetic resins and plasticizers. The production capacity worldwide was about 3.62 million t in 1997. 

Manufacturing of synthetic resin and plastic products CATEGORY ORANGE... 

Knapczyk, J. and Simon, R., Synthetic resins and plastics, in Riegels Handbook of Industrial Chemistry, J. Kent, Ed., 11th edition, Kluwer, New York. 2006. 

Received October 31, 1952. Presented before the Division of Chemical Literature, Symposium on Literature of Synthetic Resins and Plastics, at the 122nd Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Atlantic City, N. J. 

Liquid esters are good organic solvents, for example, nitrocellulose is used to dissolve some natural and synthetic resins and plastics. 

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