Plastic gloves to grape soda: analysis of an organic conversion
Evi Bukata
Initially, the idea of converting plastic gloves into grape soda might seem absurd, but due to the similarities in the chemical makeup of the two, it becomes possible – albeit through a number of reactions. This feat was carried out by NileRed, a content creator specializing in organic syntheses, whose video I will be using as a method of this conversion. The main component of certain plastic gloves is an ester known as diisononyl phthalate (DINP), which shares a lot of chemical similarity with a grape flavouring called methyl anthranilate; both compounds share a benzene ring attached to an ester, but in DINP, a second ester chain is attached on an adjacent carbon in the benzene ring, whereas in methyl anthranilate, an amine group takes its place.
Methyl anthanilate
DINP
The first step in conversion was isolating the DINP from the plastic gloves; while it is the main component, it accounted in his case for only 41% of the mass, and other vinyl plastic made up the rest of the gloves’ mass. This was done by the addition of propan -2-ol (also known as isopropyl alcohol), as DINP is soluble in the alcohol, whereas the plast ics weren’t, and would be left behind as a solid. The mixture was gently boiled to increase the reaction’s rate, and after an hour, the gloves were filtered off and discarded. The alcohol-DINP mixture was then boiled to concentrate the solution until the volume reduced by half, and then added to a round-bottomed flask. The next step was to break off the large alkyl chains, represented above as ‘ C 9 H 19 ’ . This was done by the addition of concentrated NaOH, and then heating by reflux. The NaOH here attacked the DINP molecule, splitting it apart into sodium phthalate and isononyl alcohol. After the reflux was finished, the mixture was poured into a separatory funnel, from which the lower aqueous layer containing the sodium phthalate was collected, and the upper organic layer, containing the propan-2-ol and isononyl alcohol, was discarded.
Isononyl alcohol
Sodium phthalate
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