Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Anything interesting worth doing with styrofoam peanuts?

imidazole - 15-3-2025 at 11:25

I have a lot of styrofoam from my chemical orders, and I have a ton of those styrofoam peanuts that never make it to the landfill, Is there anything not napalm-related I could do that wouldn't be a waste? ;(

Waste not, want not, and all.

Fulmen - 15-3-2025 at 12:04

I filled a coworkers wardrobe locker with it once, and I knew for a fact that he was hung over when he came in that night :-)
It took two weeks to clean up last of that mess.

j_sum1 - 15-3-2025 at 18:12

Dissolved in acetone or gasoline it makes an acceptable glue.
Or you could make styrene. (Although non-expanding polystyrene is better for that.)

NileRed would make it into grape flavouring. But that's just him.


Edit.
Another option is to, you know, pack things with it.
All my jointed glassware is in lidded plastic tubs with moulded cavities for each item. I have used a variety of things over the years to construct the tubs. Polystyrene is one of these.

[Edited on 16-3-2025 by j_sum1]

MrDoctor - 16-3-2025 at 03:22

the yield isnt great, like somewhere between 2 and 6% iirc but you can make cumene with it based on your choice of catalyst and catalyst substrate. theres a natural crude ZSM-5 equivalent zeolite which you can soak plain old nickel chloride onto. or perhaps it was silica, or diatomaceous earth? anyway, the catalyst (no fancy calcination needed either btw) has this property of adsorbing things like methyl groups, causing pyrolyzed styrene molecules to kind of want to re-form into those, in that space they are protected long enough to react with styrene/styrene degredation products, leading to methyl-benzenes and other weird stuff through radical reactions. Assuming the styrene has to act as a partial feedstock, i would think that you could favor certain products by just adding other crap in there that breaks down into the desired radicals/groups, but at the same time you are burning plastic, kind of, it will be dirty and would require proper analysis to make anything of it. I also read a study where different plastics were combined for this very thing, but just silica was used as a catalyst rather than something to protect the alcohol groups and promote radicalization, the results were, not useful. very diverse outcomes but it was all 1-5% each of things you could probably extract from gasoline.

The trick to actually getting good, upcycling i think is what its called, for any plastics, is you need an inert carrier actively removing stuff from the reaction so no reflux occurs.

averageaussie - 23-3-2025 at 15:29

get a solution of an oxidiser and soak the plastics in it, that'd be fun. I can imagine it'd make quite a fireball, similar to adding oxidiser to expanding foam (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX5uPvi33Zo)
and before you have a go at me for being a fire hazard, Jsum suggested making what is effectively napalm (gasoline and styrofoam). a single spark could set that off, and it sticks to everything (hence the glue comment)

I haven't actually heard anyone talk about using the classic DIY napalm as a glue though, I do wonder how good it would be.

DraconicAcid - 23-3-2025 at 16:16

I've wanted to try t-butylating it, then oxidizing it to t-butylbenzoic acid. Haven't gotten around to trying it yet.

imidazole - 24-3-2025 at 07:32

Quote: Originally posted by averageaussie  
get a solution of an oxidiser and soak the plastics in it, that'd be fun. I can imagine it'd make quite a fireball, similar to adding oxidiser to expanding foam (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX5uPvi33Zo)
and before you have a go at me for being a fire hazard, Jsum suggested making what is effectively napalm (gasoline and styrofoam). a single spark could set that off, and it sticks to everything (hence the glue comment)

I haven't actually heard anyone talk about using the classic DIY napalm as a glue though, I do wonder how good it would be.



...I may have used napalm as glue before. It's great but it's hard to work with because it can dissolve more of your styrofoam if you don't use a thick goop

chempyre235 - 25-3-2025 at 12:24

There are a couple of interesting ideas in this thread.