Pvc what is it

Goodrich Company in the s. By comparison, many other common plastics were first synthesized and commercially viable only in the s and s.

It is used most commonly in the construction industry and is also used for signs, healthcare applications, and fiber for clothing. Check out the industry's best online course for new inventors.

Lean on veteran guidance to help take your product from initial idea to profitable product. In its base form, PVC is characterized by its rigid yet brittle structure.

While the plasticized version holds various uses across multiple industries, the rigid version of PVC also has its share of uses. Industries such as plumbing, sewage, and agriculture can utilize rigid PVC across many functions. Flexible, plasticized, or regular PVC is softer and more amenable to bending than uPVC due to the addition of plasticizers like phthalates e. Flexible PVC is commonly used in construction as insulation on electrical wires or in flooring for homes, hospitals, schools, and other areas where a sterile environment is a priority.

In some cases, PVC can act as an effective replacement for rubber. Rigid PVC is also used in construction as a pipe for plumbing and siding, commonly referred to by the term "vinyl" in the United States. PVC pipe is often referred to by its "schedule" e. Significant differences between the schedules include things like wall thickness, pressure rating, and color. Some of PVC plastic's most important characteristics include its relatively low price, its resistance to environmental degradation as well as to chemicals and alkalis , high hardness, and outstanding tensile strength for plastic in the case of rigid PVC.

PVC remains widely available, commonly used, and easily recyclable categorized by resin identification code "3". Polyvinyl Chloride is a "thermoplastic" as opposed to "thermoset" material, which has to do with the way the plastic responds to heat. Thermoplastic materials become liquid at their melting point a range for PVC between the very low degrees Celsius and higher values like degrees Celsius depending on the additives.

A primary useful attribute about thermoplastics is that they can be heated to their melting point, cooled, and reheated again without significant degradation. Instead of burning, thermoplastics like polypropylene liquefy allows them to be easily injection molded and then subsequently recycled. By contrast, thermoset plastics can only be heated once typically during the injection molding process. The first heating causes thermoset materials to set similar to a 2-part epoxy , resulting in a chemical change that cannot be reversed.

If you tried to heat a thermoset plastic to a high temperature a second time, it would only burn. This characteristic makes thermoset materials poor candidates for recycling. PVC packaging is also widely used in the packaging of pharmaceutical products. Other examples of PVC healthcare products : "Artificial skin" in emergency burns treatment, blood and plasma transfusion sets, blood vessels for artificial kidneys, catheters, blood bags, containers for intravenous solution giving sets, container for urine continence and ostomy products, endotracheal tubing, feeding and pressure monitoring tubing, inhalation masks, surgical and examination gloves, shatter-proof bottles and jars, mattress and bedding covers and blister and dosage packs for pharmaceuticals and medicines.

PVC was first used as cable insulation as a replacement for rubber during the Second World War and continues to be used widely to this day due to its flexibility, ease of handling in installation and inherent flame retardation.

PVC cables do not harden and crack over time and find use in many applications from telecommunications to electric blankets. Typical examples of PVC automotive components include:.

PVC brings both high performance qualities and important cost benefits to the automotive industry. Automotive applications : Instrument panels and associated mouldings, interior door panels and pockets, sun visors, seat coverings, headlining, seals, mud flaps, underbody coating, floor coverings, exterior side moulding and protective strips and anti-stone damage protection.

As PVC is a highly versatile construction material with a favourable environmental footprint it is extensively used in the construction of sporting venues. This includes use in seating, roofings, floorings as well as piping and electrical wiring. Some examples of sporting venues using PVC for their roopfing membranes are shown below.

Gottlieb Daimler Stadion roof, Stuttgart. Lords Cricket Ground roof. Picture: Kind permission of Base Structures Ltd. Volksparkstadion roof, Hamburg. Cape Town World Cup Stadium. Stadium seating. Picture: Fotalia. In addition to use in stadiums and sporting venues, PVC is used extensively by athletes from the clothes and shoes they wear to the equipment they use and the surfaces they compete on. Picture: Tarkett 2 All weather sailing protection 3 Inflatable climbing wall.

Picture: Courtesy of Akcros Chemicals. Other sporting applications: performance sports surfaces, sports equipment, clothing, protective barriers, matting, wiring and piping infrastructure. More information on the role of PVC in sport can be found at www. PVC is widely used in coated fabrics applications, this includes use in emergency shelters to help people at times of disaster. PVC's contribution is by no means limited to its products.

The PVC industry is also setting a unique example in the process of working together as a supply chain in driving forward sustainable development. There are many definitions of Sustainability and Sustainable Development, but it can best be defined by the three main pillars of sustainability; social, economic and environmental. The structure and composition of PVC lends itself to being mechanically recycled, with reasonable ease, to produce good quality recycling material.

As with most recycling streams, sorting is of the utmost importance to achieve optimal recycling of PVC materials. Acrosss the world, the PVC industry has invested heavily to develop sophisticated recycling schemes to ensure that large amounts of PVC can be reused in a new generation of advanced energy efficient, sustainable products.

This investment has meant that not just prodcution off-cuts are recycled but also products such as doors and PVC-U windows are recycled on a huge global scale. Whilst old windows are recycled, the process is far more complex that off-cuts due to contamination such as building debris e.

The Recofloor scheme, managed by Axion Consulting Ltd, provides a mechanism for waste vinyl flooring to be collected and recycled. The scheme accepts uplifted vinyl flooring and post-installation off-cuts. The recycled flooring can be used in the manufacture of new flooring or to produce traffic management products such as traffic cones and road sign bases.

For further information, please visit, www. The scheme involves the collection of used PVC medical devices including IV solution bags; nasal cannulas; oxygen tubes; anaesthetic masks and oxygen masks. These toxins can produce sever illness like cancer, diabetes, neurological damage, reproductive and birth defects.

Dioxin is a persistent Organic Pollutants POPs , this are chemical substances that persist in the environment, bio-accumulate through the food chain, and pose a risk of causing adverse effects to human health and the environment. In addition, the chloro-ethene monomer is also a carcinogen released during PVC manufacture. This un-reacted monomer can also be present in the final PVC and released during its life cycle.

Plasticizers added to make PVC flexible, may leach out ex. Disposal Plastic was almost too good, as it was durable and degraded very slowly. On the other hand this same properties is what makes plastic a dangerous material. Furthermore, the separation of the different additives and compounds forming the plastic makes recycle a difficult option. The biggest problem with plastics recycling is that it is difficult to automate the sorting of plastic waste, and so it is labor-intensive ex.

Thus because the value of the material is low, recycling plastics is unprofitable. Products such as automobiles are now being designed to make recycling of their large plastic parts easier.

The international standard for defining environmental claims on products or packaging can be found in ISO Environmental Labels and Declarations-Self-declared Environmental Claims. For example, a recyclable plastic container using this scheme is marked with a triangle with three arrows inside of it see picture on the left , which enclose a number giving the plastic type as follows:. HDPE i.

PVC i. LDPE i. Others - Incineration The incineration of PVC causes the release of dioxins and other toxic chemicals. This is due to the not biodegradability of PVC which stays in place indefinitely; besides, attention should be taken to the fact that PVC may leach out toxic chemicals and contaminate the soil and water.

Vinyl products consume less energy, generate fewer emissions, and save more energy than many other products. PVC is used in the production of hundreds of products that consumers encounter in everyday life, and many more that are encountered less frequently but are nevertheless important in construction, electronics, healthcare and other applications.

PVC is used in these applications because of its low cost and desirable physical and mechanical properties. It is fabricated efficiently into a wide range of both rigid and flexible products. PVC also has inherent flame resistance. Substitutes for PVC materials may be available, but often the alternative materials and processes are not as efficient or substitution costs are high.

Dioxin comes from many sources, according to EPA. PVC is an extremely small source, so small that levels of dioxin in the environment would be essentially unchanged even if vinyl were not being manufactured and used every day in important products. Overall dioxin levels in the environment have decreased by more than 90 percent since , during which time production and use of vinyl have more than tripled.

Phthalate plasticizers are added to vinyl when flexible products are being made. Phthalates have been thoroughly studied and reviewed by a number of government scientific agencies and regulatory bodies world-wide and these agencies have concluded that phthalates used in commercial products do not pose a risk to human health at typical exposure levels.

Information collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the last 10 years indicates that, despite the fact that phthalates are used in many products, exposure is extremely low — significantly lower than any levels of concern set by regulatory agencies. Stabilizers are added to vinyl formulations to lubricate and control the integrity of the material in the manufacturing process, or for coloring.