Bioplastics
Bioplastic making documentation
Making my own bioplastics
Make your own bioplastics. Try various recipes, add other materials, play with textures and use your mold. Document your process and findings. (Bron: Brightspace)
I've tried about 6 different recipes. First I wanted to avoid the gelatine because I don't like eating pork. But when I saw that most recipes in the bioplastic cookbook were with gelatine I did made 2 bioplastics with gelatine because I felt like I needed to try different kinds of recipes. When cooking the gelatine it smelled so bad that I really couldn't stand making more bioplastics from gelatine unfortunately. My molds are digitally finished but I haven't had the time yet to print them out so for now I've just used my petri dished.
For the recipes I've used the Bioplastics Cookbook by Margaret Dunne.
1. Agar Agar - plant based bioplastic
Recipe
For this recipe I used:
2.7 g glycerine
40 ml water
1.6 g agar
Tulip flower & leaf
I had to make this 4 times to fill up the petri dish enough for the tulip flower. So I actually used this amount of ingredients but then x4
The first thing I did (with every recipe) was greasing the petri dish with vaseline so that the plastic would come off easier after 24 hours when it hardend.
2. Secondly, I poured about 2.7g glycerin into a pot.
3. Unfortunately I didn't have an electric scale so I just guessed that in this teaspoon was about 1.6g Agar
4. I added 40ml of water and started cooking at about medium high heat which was 5 on my electric cooking stove.
5. Beforehand I filled up a petri dish with some tulip leaves and green flower spikes. When the ingredients in the pot became a bit viscous I poured it into the petri dish as quick as possible before it dried. I had to repeat step 1-5, 4 times before the tulip was mostly underneath the liquid:
After 24 hours
It got very fragile and it was still a bit wet, maybe because I put the entire petri dish in my garden and it was a bit moist outside. It broke a bit when I tried to take it out.
Video
Watch a video of the bioplastic here to get a better experience of it.
2. Agar Agar Foam - plant based bioplastic with soap
Recipe
For this recipe I've used:
2.7 g glycerin
40 ml water
1.6 g agar
6 ml soap
Tea spoon of kurkuma
20ml of blue Listerine
I also repeated this proces 2 times to have enough to get the petri dish filled. I just forgot to pour in the soap the first time.
Beforehand I filled up a petri dish again with what I wanted to have in the plastic; a small branch with needles on it.
When the ingredients became a bit viscous in the pot I filled up the petri dish. Unfortunately I couldn't get the bubbles out. I poured some of my own natural paint into the petri dish. I did this when I just poured the ingredients into the petri dish and it was still a bit watery. I made blue from Listerine and yellow from kurkuma. I injected this through the open side of the petri dish with some kind of dosage vial.
After 24 hours
I like the end result a lot, it looks pretty and it feels very firm and durable.
Video
Watch a video of the bioplastic here to get a better experience of it.
3. Hard Agar Agar - plant based bioplastic
Recipe
For this recipe I've used:
1.8 g glycerine
40 ml water
1.6 g agar
After 24 hours
II discovered that using less glycerine made the end result a lot less flexible but it gave it a nice glass-like effect. I like this kind of feel of the material way more than the kind of jelly ones.
But when the ingredients became viscous and I wanted to pour it into the petri dish, I was too slow so i couldn't get it in nicely like the shape of the petri dish. But it came out looking like a butterfly, which was pretty cool.
Video
Watch a video of the bioplastic here to get a better experience of it.
4. Flexible gelatine foam - animal based bioplastic.
Like i've mentioned before I didn't enjoy the smell of the cooked gelatine. I think animal based bioplastic is a bit contradictory. Making plastic from animals is not very environment friendly and the whole idea of bioplastics is to make it environment friendly in my opinion.
Recipe
For the first gelatine recipe I've used:
30 g glycerin
60 ml water
45 g gelatine
6 ml soap
table spoon of kurkuma & sugar
I've used Kurkuma again to give it some color, this time I used more kurkuma than water so it became more bright yellow. I steered into the pot until it became viscous again and then put it into a petri dish. I forgot to put it outside in the cold so the green stuff you see is mold I think. After this I put it in my garden again and it didn't mold any further after another 24 hours. It's about 3cm thick.
After 24 hours
After 24 hours it became very jelly-ish and it still smelled very bad because of the gelatine. The foam on the other side was very soft but it was very firm.
Weirdly enough only the front side (the side which was against the petri dish) is the only side that is from foam, the other side is just kind of jelly. I think this is because I didn't steer it well enough.
Video
Watch a video of the bioplastic here to get a better experience of it.
5. Firm gelatine foam - animal based
Recipe
For this recipe I've used about: (I'm not sure exactly anymore)
1.8 ml glycerin
12 g gelatine
60 ml water
table spoon of kurkuma & sugar
After 24 hours
It looked the same as recipe 4 but just thinner and more rigid. It also had foam on the front side but not on the back side. This one didn't mold after 24 hours inside the house. Probably because it had a lot less gelatine in it.
Video
Watch a video of the bioplastic here to get a better experience of it.
6. Fragile agar agar - plant based bioplastic
Recipe
For this recipe I've used:
2.7 g glycerine
1.6 g agar
40 ml water
dried apples & peers
muesli
teaspoon of honey
This is the honey I used:
After 24 hours
After 24 hours I took the material out of the petri dish and it looked very breakable, I didn't expect this to happen because I filled it up with a lot of hard stuff like the muesli and dried apples and peers. It did smell very nice and it felt very heavy.
Video:
Watch a video of the bioplastic here to get a better experience of it.
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