Assignment
Another week of working from home, and we're making bioplastics. We received a bunch of ingredients to make these in our own kitchen.
Make your own bioplastics Try various recipes, add other materials, play with textures and use your mold. Document your process and findings.
Future applications develop a concept for future applications.
Material properties sheet Describe the properties of your material.
Experimental toolkit understand the experience of your material
There are different types of bioplastics:
Biodegradeable Overtime the product will disappear due to a natural process (initiated by humans)
Biobased based on biological raw products that come from a renewable source, never a fossil material.
Bioplastics are already widely used in short cycle products. This is however strongly outweighed by traditional plastics we know. EU measures, legislation are already enforcing the use of bioplastics.
You don't have to become a scientist, you are a designer. Get an impression of what the properties of your materials are and try to think of possible application
11g Glycerine
80ml Water
3g Agar
This was my first ever created recipe. I chose to make it as flexible as possible by using a lot of glycerine. I forgot to scoop out the froth, so it could have turned out clearer. I casted it in a serving ring taped on on a glass plate.
At first I thought not removing the froth was a mistake, but it turns out that it casts an interesting textured shadow in direct sunlight.
The final product is very flexible and silicone-like, similar to a baking mat. It has no smell and is slightly sticky, dust stays on the surface. It feels sturdy enough to be stretched.
11g Glycerine
80ml Water
3g Agar
When making hard candies, you can use a pressed mold in powder (powdered sugar, cornstarch) to cast the candies in. The main benefit is that the final products can always be removed from the "molds", and they don't stick. Since I was quite worried this material was going to be sticky, I pressed a little mold in all-purpose flour.
Freshly poured the material looked almost like a wine gum. The surface dried quite fast.
There were some bubbles on the surface that I wasn't quite happy about. I know that when pouring resin, a blowtorch or lighter is used to pop these bubbles. As an amateur pyromaniac I take advantage of any excuse to use my little crème brûlée burner. It unfortunately had no effect. The picture above was post-burning, and there are still some bubbles.
After waiting for 3 days, I picked up the material out of the powder. It had shrunk about 30%. There was some powder that stuck to the material, but I rinsed it off with water. I was surprised at how well the details transferred into the material. The powder did allow for a little more deformation, so it slightly curled up.
What was especially interesting, was the difference from the materials poured on glass. I used the same batch as for the previous material, just in a different mold. It's firm and rubber-like, and it lacks the lightly sticky surface from the previous pour. What I think happened is that the flour extracted the moisture from the material.
11g Glycerine
80ml Water
3g Agar
10g smoked paprika powder
To the leftovers of the clear agar agar batch, I added some smoked paprika for color.
The flexibility is almost identical, although I would say it feels a little more sturdy than the clear agar agar. The surface is a bit rough, but I can't tell if this is because I forgot to scoop off the froth, or because of the smoked paprika. After making this material I decided that I would use color extracts instead of raw materials for color.
11g Glycerine
80ml Tulip extract
3g Agar
I tried to achieve the same flexibility as the clear agar agar again, but this time as clear as possible and with a little color. I used the tulip color extract instead of water.
It casted a water-like shadow in direct sunlight and feels similar to the clear agar agar, but smoother and stickier. You can clearly see the difference in the smoothness of the surface when the froth is removed.
Something in me told me I should slap this on the window, so I did.
After reading this weeks literature, I thought it would be nice to incorporate multiple waste products from the same process, and I chose for the remains of the breakfast I had that morning.
120 Coffee ground dye
1,5g Glycerin
Ground Eggshells
25g Gelatin
I first wanted to leave out the glycerin, so the final product (in theory) would be edible. Last minute I decided to add just a little bit of glycerin for a little flexibility.
First I had to grind the eggshells down to a powder.
I cooked the eggs first. I thought this would kill most of the bacteria, which might prevent mold in the final product. And I also wanted to make egg salad, so it was pretty convenient.
I also removed the layer between the eggshell and egg. I don't know if this is necessary, but I thought it might cause trouble when grinding it down to a powder.
I just got a new blender, so I was still a bit afraid to throw eggshells in it. Instead i used a grinding stone and used twisting motions to get the eggshells as small as possible.
I wasn't able to grind it down to a fine powder, the largest pieces were still around half a millimeter. I wish I had used white eggs for a more solid look, but the brown pieces still make it recognizable as eggshells which is also nice.
I removed the material from the mold after 3 days, and let it harden for another week.
The material curled up a bit, but is hard and sturdy. The eggshells sunk down and give one side of the material a rough, sandpaper-like finish.
80ml Massala dye
2g Glycerin
3g Agar Agar
Circular piece of cloth
I wanted to use the yellow on a material involving a piece of white fabric Sam put in our bioplastic kits for at home, to see if the color of the spice would still transfer to the fabric. I have no idea what kind of fabric it is. I poured a bit of the plastic in the petri dish first, put the circular cloth on top and then added some more bioplastic.
After a day not much shrinking had occurred yet and it was still wet and dewy at this point. So I waited for another week to see what would happen.
The material shrunk even further. The color dulled out a little, but is still clearly yellow. I don't know if the actual cloth stained too, or if it's just the material covering it.
190ml Tea
10g Glycerin
30ml Vinegar
3g Cornstarch
No matter how hard I tried, this bioplastic could not be released from its mold. I added a strong tea for some color instead of water. I poured them in different thicknesses. After a day it was way too sticky to be removed from the petri dishes. So I waited.
And I waited and waited. They all shrunk significantly and stayed sticky. The material tore when I tried to peel it out of the mold, or stuck to itself. The thinnest materials didn't let go out of the petri dish at all. The thicker ones were more solid, but very stretchy.
10g Glycerin
160ml Basil dye
3.5g Cornstarch
30ml Vinegar
During the additive manufacturing week Britt and I made a mold for a skull. I was a bit worried, because the previous recipe with cornstarch didn't dry well, but I went for it anyway.
I put the mold together with toothpicks and some tape, and poured the material in. I tried to let it cool off a little because I didn't want to melt the 2d printed mold.
After a day I saw a crack form on the surface. This concerned me a bit, but I waited for another week, since the material felt wet still, even on the surface.
Taking the mold apart was a disaster.
The material tore as soon as I took the mold apart. The insides didn't get the chance to dry at all.
Even though the material didn't dry well, you can still see the details of the 3d mold profiles in it. Both my cornstarch/vinegar recipes didn't turn out well, so maybe i'm doing something wrong.
A little archive of dyes I made
Modern designers are spoiled. The digital software we use have every color that a human eye can see available for infinite use. With synthetic ink we can create most of these colors on paper. We often forget where these colors come from. I will try to extract natural dyes to use in bioplastics, so final products will be all natural.
All the products I used to extract these dyes were found in my home. My plan was to extract all the colors by cooking the materials I found. To test the dye I briefly put in a cotton pad while the dye was boiling. I don't think this was a very good way to test the dyes, but it's supposed to give some indication as to how the color will turn out.
I received a beautiful bouquet of purple tulips and I'm in love with the color. After seeing classmates use hibiscus tea to extract a purple dye I wanted to try it with different flowers. After finding a mention in an article of using tulip pigments specifically to color bioplastics, I figured I'd give it a try.
The article doesn't show how they extract the color. They did state they used dried tulips. I didn't have time to dry them so I just used the boiling method.
I had 50 tulips, so I could afford to lose a few. I used the petals of 5 flowers. It hurt my patriotic heart a bit to destroy our national symbol of pride.
Shortly after boiling the petals lost their purple color. I expected the water to become brown, but after cooking it through for about 10 minutes this lovely bright green color appeared.
They look nothing like the original product, which is a bit of a disappointment but a beautiful green color nevertheless.
I still insisted on making a purple dye and after a quick search I found this article. They claimed that: "The same basil, Ocimum basilicum, that flavors your salads can also produce a nice purplish-grey dye bath. Different types of basil can produce different shades. Gather the leaves and stems and boil with water to extract the color." I was limited to the products I had in my house, so if "purplish-grey" all I can get I will have to work with it.
I'm quite skeptical, since no other articles I read mentioned using basil, and there is no picture of the end result. We will find out as soon
My basil plant apparently didn't like direct sunlight, so it was nearing its end anyway. I cut of all the stems and leaves and threw them in a pot. After boiling for half an hour and straining the basil out, I was left with a brown/grey dye.
I still felt a bit disappointed. Betrayed even. Although it's a beautiful color, it's still nowhere near purple. I think my trust in vague internet articles is damaged.
A dye with a bit of a backup story. After the two muted colors I made, I was ready for something bright and happy. Loes said that basically anything that will leave stains on a shirt, can create a good dye. I immediately thought one ingredient my mother always told me to never spill, the king of all stains: massala. As a person from a Surinamese and Indonesian family, I'm quite familiar with this ingredient.
This yellow spice leaves stains that are almost impossible to remove if you don't treat them immediately. Recently I did have a little accident, when an egg from my roti rolled of my plate onto my white cotton shirt.
I ran to the sink and used a stain removal wipe I had lying around. The color shifted almost instantly to a bright red red, which I had never seen before. I looked through the ingredients of the stain removal wipe to see if there was any substance that triggered this change in color, but i didn't know any of the ingredients. Eventually I successfully removed both the yellow and red stains with bleach.
Now that I know that under certain (unknown) circumstances, the otherwise yellow massala can show up bright red. I thought it would be interesting to make a dye out of it, which may have an unexpected outcome.
I cooked two teaspoons of massala in half a liter of water for 10 minutes. Then I strained through a sift and a coffee filter. It took quite a while to strain the massala powder out the mixture. I As expected the dye stained the white cotton, as this happened to my cotton shirt as well. I was secretly hoping for the red shade to suddenly show up, but I knew this was very unlikely.
I'm very happy with how saturated the color is. I wish I knew which ingredients turned the yellow to red, but I'm satisfied with the final result.
My coffee machine discards coffee grounds in nice round pills. We usually save them for gardening, so I had a lot to play with. I chose to go for the used coffee grounds instead of just coffee because I like the idea of using waste-products.
Since it took some time to separate the powder from the dye the previous time, I thought I could try containing the grounds in a filter. This however kept all the grounds tightly pressed together in the filter, and didn't give them the room to float around and released color.
I threw the grounds of 3 cups of coffee in a liter of water and boiled for half an hour. Then strained through a coffee filter.
I didn't expect for the already used coffee to release this much color. I like the smell, and i wonder if different types of coffee will give different colors.
