Legos have always fascinated me, these prismatic building blocks were the gateway to expressing my creativity and most likely yours too, over a trillion of these blocks have been made over the the past 60 years. People not only play with these blocks, but the blocks play an important role in shaping interest, such as mine, they had a part in me becoming a chemist. Legos have a lot in common with chemistry, you can build with molecules in the same way you can with blocks and create new things, just as blocks can connect in specific ways and not others, so can molecules. Besides these similarities legos are a marvel of not only engineering but chemistry.

Legos are made from plastic, specifically ABS. This plastic is a polymer composed of three distinct monomers: acrylonitrile, butadiene, and styrene. These chemicals combine to create a robust material with excellent resistance, durability, and machining properties, making ABS ideal for manufacturing precise and colorful Lego bricks.

The intriguing challenge arises when we attempt to revert this plastic back to its original chemical components. Most recycling processes are mechanical, where the plastic is shredded and reformed into new products. However, chemical recycling is a far more complex endeavor. Ideally, we would like to break down the polymer back into its monomers, essentially reversing the chemical bonds that formed the ABS.

The problem is the very properties that make plastic so useful—its stability and durability—also make this process incredibly challenging. ABS is a very stable polymer, resistant to breaking down under normal conditions. However, we can overcome this stability through a process known as thermal depolymerization. By applying significant heat, we can break the chemical bonds within the polymer, effectively decomposing it into its constituent monomers.

Lets see if we can break down ABS into its components, mainly I want to focus on getting styrene out, due to its use in other chemical synthesis.

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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
02:07 Chemistry
04:52 Washing
05:38 Distillation
08:00 Analysis

Thanks for watching!