The world's most widely produced plastic, a thermoplastic polymer of long chains of ethylene (C2H4) monomer joined by addition polymerization; grades range from flexible film (LDPE, LLDPE) to rigid, high-strength material (HDPE, UHMWPE), used from bags and food wrap to bottles, pipe and industrial containers. It has two separate, non-continuous origin events roughly thirty-five years apart, often collapsed into one story: an 1898 laboratory curiosity with no industrial follow-through, and a 1933 industrial accident that became the basis of a genuine commercial process.
Facts
Primary UsePackaging, film, bottles, pipe and industrial containers, favored for low cost, chemical inertness and moldability. 1 Origin YearThe industrially significant date: Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson, at ICI's Winnington laboratory, observed an unexpected pressure drop and a waxy solid on 27 March 1933 while reacting ethylene and benzaldehyde at 1,900 atm and 170C, the process that led to commercial polyethylene. A separate, earlier, industrially inconsequential event predates this by 35 years: Hans von Pechmann produced solid polyethylene as a laboratory curiosity in 1898 while thermally decomposing diazomethane, identified by colleagues Eugen Bamberger and Friedrich Tschirner as a -CH2- chain polymer they called "polymethylene." No industrial use followed the 1898 event; the two should not be read as one continuous invention. Classification
Material Class Connections
Associated With
Polyethylene is routinely shaped by injection molding.
Polyethylene is the world's most widely produced plastic by volume.
Source Polyethylene (New World Encyclopedia)
Ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene is the standard bearing liner in the socket of a total hip replacement.
In Field
Source Polyethylene (New World Encyclopedia)
Sources
1. Polyethylene (New World Encyclopedia)
New World EncyclopediaHistory section
Polyethylene was first synthesized by the German chemist Hans von Pechmann, who prepared it accidentally in 1898... The first industrially practical synthesis of polyethylene was discovered (again by accident) in 1933, by Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson at the Imperial Chemical Industries.
material-class sentence
The world's most widely produced plastic, a thermoplastic polymer of long chains of ethylene (C2H4) monomer joined by addition polymerization; grades range from flexible film (LDPE, LLDPE) to rigid, high-strength material (HDPE, UHMWPE), used from bags and food wrap to bottles, pipe and industrial containers.
- In Field: Chemical Engineering
- Associated With: Plastics
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