Make Potato Plastic!

**Note: If you like this Instructable and are looking for something a little more challenging that will yield better results then check out my new potato plastic instructables here http://www.instructables.com/id/Starch_Plastic_20_Pressure_Cooker_Hacking/**

Also if you have questions and want some expert answers try heading to this website http://green-plastics.net and just post your question on the Q&A board, they will be able to help out with your question in a more timely manner! 

Have you ever wondered if there is a more environmentally friendly way to make plastic with OUT using foreign oil? Currently, it is estimated that the worldwide production of petroleum based plastic is around 100 million tons annually, and that seven million barrels of petroleum are required PER DAY to produce that plastic ( info source ). What if we could take that number and cut it down to zero! This is all possible with the eco-friendly plastic of the future, and you can make some right now- OUT OF A POTATO! When I first discovered that you could do this, I used corn starch, water, and corn oil to make the plastic; I then made a science fair project out of it, won second place at my school, and won honorable mention (3-6 place) at the 2003 Regional Science Fair. The plastic I made for the science fair worked, but it dried out and became brittle in about a week. A few years later, I discovered an article describing a way to enhance it's plasticity by altering the chemical composition of the starch.
For this instructable, I will describe how to make plastic from scratch, by extracting starch from a potato, and processing it into a resin with household items. If you don't feel like taking the time to extract the starch from a potato, you can just use corn starch instead. This is a project for all you environmentalists, tree hungers, global warming believers (I am not one by the way), and especially you Al Gore.

Lets have some fun and make potato plastic!

Step 1 Gather Materials

Most of the materials you will need will be in your house or can be bought at most supermarkets and home improvement stores.

Ingredients:
2 White skinned potatoes OR potato starch OR corn starch
water
100% Vegetable Liquid Glycerin
White Vinegar
Food Coloring

Tools / Supplies:
Non stick pan
Spatula or Spoonula
Stove Top or Hot Plate
Knife or guillotine

Optional:
blender
peeler
filter
casting compound

Comments

[sunshiine]

Hi Brandon, I was excited because one of my posters sent me your page because I made plastic milk. I can't wait to paint the things that I made out of it. I will come back to see your process in more detail and see if it is something I would like to try. I sometimes have trouble locating some products in my area because I live in a small town. I hope I can make this. Thanks so much for sharing your hard work! Here is my link if you would like to see what I made. I am still waiting for it to dry but will posting pictures of my finished creations. Sunshiine
http://www.instructables.com/id/Plastic-Milk/

[Aegian2424]

could you use regular flower instead of starch?

[asolé]

Could you explain in more detail the process to purify starch?

[gregstevens]

Hey Brandon! I hope you're doing well.

I just thought I'd mention that we're constantly posting answers to specific questions that people have about making bioplastic at home on the website,

http://green-plastics.net

We've had recent questions about everything from how to make home-made bioplastic waterproof, to explaining the chemistry behind why the vinegar helps improve the bioplastic that you are making.

It would be great if you  could let people know about our Q&A board in your instructable!

[Brandon121233]

done, you get the headline spot boss! Thanks for helping with the questions.

[gregstevens]

Thank you so much!

[bounty823]

This is so cool . I didn't use glycerin. I used table sugar but it turned out fine! I mad a helmet for my dog out of this.

[locofocos]

When you're done, is it hard like the plastic an army man is made of? How hard is this when it's been made with glycerine? with sugar? When you made it with sugar, how much did you use?

[bounty823]

its pretty hard, and the small pieces are brittle to a extent

[EngineerJakit]

Yo Brando!

Could this biodegradable plastic be used for merchandising purposes? I plan to make some stuff for a website and was wondering if using this method would be safe as a consumer product.

If you wanna know more, pm me about it!

[jgervacio]

i want to use this thing for our investigatory project i hope u will give us permission because u did great, so much.

[girlintubesocks]

Hi Brandon, I stumbled upon your instructable and decided to use it as a science project in my school. I have a question, do you know how to create this into a plastic bag or a site that instructs you how to? Thank you very much!

[girlintubesocks]

Oh, and also, where else may I put the substance when it dries aside from a heat pad? Just to be sure.

[Brandon121233]

try greasing a plastic ziplock bag with crisco, inflate and seal the bag, then coat the bag evenly with starch plastic and hang it up with a clothes pin. Hopefully you can just deflate the ziplock bag and slip it out of the bio-bag

[nbuenavente]

can u give me the general and specific objectives and the variables of this bioplastic for my research paper / investigatory project?? can u?? TNX :)
or ur researcg paper as well. :)

[girlintubesocks]

Will be trying that, thank you very much for the fast answer!

[mildred100]

Hello girlintubesocks,

Have you tried making the bio plastic bag? Did it work out well? Were you able to make a plastic bag? You know I am also planning on making that as a science project it's just that I don't know how to make the plastic bag. I don't get to the instruction of brandon. What do you mean by *greasing* the ziplock bag with *crisco*?

[girlintubesocks]

Unfortunately mildred100, I was not able to make the bio plastic bag, for it was not approved by my school board.

[mildred100]

Why is it not approved? What do you think is the reason?

[mcablao]

hey there! I'm Frances. Um, it's about the potato plastic. can you send me a copy of your research paper about potato plastic? because we have a project in our school about investigatory project so i'm planning to use your invention THE POTATO PLASTIC. oh please,please,please, I really need your help and I really need a copy ,too.by the way I'm from the Philippines. so can you send it on yahoo mail or facebook? here's my e-mail. [e-mail]

thanks a lot!

[Brandon121233]

I don't have a research paper on this, it was an independent study

[mcablao]

hey there! I'm Frances. Um, it's about the potato plastic. can you send me a copy of your research paper about potato plastic? because we have a project in our school about investigatory project so i'm planning to use your invention THE POTATO PLASTIC. oh please,please,please, I really need your help and I really need a copy ,too.by the way I'm from the Philippines. so can you send it on yahoo mail or facebook? here's my e-mail. [e-mail]

thanks a lot!

[zbugna]

Hello friend, could you send me your research paper paper too. It would be a great help for making my own investigatory project.

Here's my facebook account: [e-mail]
God bless you.. (^-^)

[delaneypratt]

When the plastic dries is it cracked up? and also is it hard? and one more thing is it paintable?

[hsm_girl_94]

Amazing! I just wanna ask how can you prove that the plastic is really biodegradable?? Please reply :-) thanks

[dpagaduan]

you just put the stupid thing in a pit and after f ucking days it will disappear get it or you are just a slowminded?

[Brandon121233]

make something out of it, put it in dirt and wait 5 months

[etan1]

I have been trying with this experiment but it is not working. Everytime I dry it in an oven for 2 hours at 50 degree Celsius, the results turn out to become sticky and soft after a few minutes. Can I know how to fix this problem? Thanks.

[UncleMike1950]

I am trying to come up with a process similar to the Clothique process for fiqurines. Does anyone know the process or something similar?
Thank you

[MisMo]

Hello Lupe!

I am wondering if you could send me your research paper as well. I am trying to reinforce my potato plastic as well, so far in vain.

[e-mail]

Thank you so much and keep up the awesome work!

[mildred100]

did you use a fiber for your plastic?
in my porject i'll use a fiber. What do you think is the proper amount of fiber that i will mix with my plastic if i'll follow the proportion of measurement in your instructables?

[wduck3]

Can you bake or cool it to make it dry faster?

[lupefiasco]

Hi, I'm doing a research project, where I'm reinforcing these plastics with natural fibers, and entering a contest with it. However, I'm having great results with reinforcement, but without it (what you are doing here), my plastics are not drying, and are still gooey after a month. I have dried the other plastics by pressing them between two glass plates, because I need a smooth surface as I am testing them with a tensile tester. I have followed your recipe perfectly in terms of materials, but could you give me some more specific temperatures in Farenheit, of what you consider "low" and "high" temperature? I think that this may be the problem. Thanks, I would really appreciate an expedient response. ([e-mail])

[mildred100]

anyway, can I have a copy of you research paper if possible and if it's okay. ( [e-mail])

[mildred100]

Hey Lupe,
I really like the idea of your project. I really want to make that as our project too; however, we don't have tensile tester in our school. My plan originally is to make a plastic bag ( which I don't know how to accomplish) Next I will test the strength of the plastic bag in carrying things. I don't know how to logically do the testing in testing the strength. Can we do that without the tensile tester? I mean is testing the tensile the same with testing the ultimate strenth the plastic can handle? What can you suggest as the best step that we could take? and about the fiber thing that you add to your plastics.. what are they for? What are fibers? As I understand it they can help strengthen the plastic. Would the existence of the fiber somehow affect the biodegradability of the plastics? Cause you see, aside from the strength of the plastics, * durability* , *practicability* we also aim to test its biodegradability by burying it in soil and observing it. Do you think it can really be decomposed. I have read in the net a certain study claiming that after two weeks, she had seen her plastics decompose by fifty percent. I don't what that fifty percent mean. Could that really possibly happen? I would really appreciate if you can answer all my questions and offer my advice. I really want to succeed on this project. What makes this project hard for me is the fact that it's a group project. (whew...)

[lupefiasco]

Didn't see the biodegradability question, sorry. I have no experience with soil biodegradability. Look at my paper and you will see that I used hydrodegradation by placing plstics in water... didn't work incredibly well. Just try it, who knows what will happen. That's the fun of science! 50% would mean that when they massed the plastic after being buried in soil, the plastic was half of its original mass. Try it out with your plastics and let me know how it goes.

[lupefiasco]

From my understanding, vegetable oils will work just fine. Plasticizers do affect the durability of plastics, but if you use the plasticizer as a control it should not be an issue if you are doing a comparative study.

Natural fibers are the individual strands that make up cotton clothing (the filaments on the threads that tear off your shirts) or that make up different types of strings. In nature, they make up plants stalks, etc. When amylose & amylopectin fuse, natural fibers will strengthen that bond. As you see in my study, the thickest, most tangled fiber did the best job of reinforcing the plastic.

I worked at a plastics company for this project, so I had access to a tensile tester. Get in touch with a nearby company or university, no doubt they will have a tester that you can use. They are easy to operate. As for the fibers, I also used a grinder at the company lab to grind my fibers down, but you can try a coffee grinder... not sure if it'll work though.

Addressing the testing if you cannot find a tensile tester-- I think that you could make bags by coating two glass plates and then connecting the bottoms of the plates? Experiment with this. I did not try making plastic bags, it is probably more difficult. You could always try a less exact method of measuring strength/durability by placing small weights inside the bags and seeing how many the bag can hold. Definitely less exact and the chance of scientific error will increase, but make do with what you have.

I have sent you the paper, let me know if you have other questions. I encourage you to seek out local plastic companies or contact professors universities. Most labs have tensile testers. Good luck.

[afarid2]

hello can you send me research paper at [e-mail] or [e-mail] plsss

[tatjanabc]

hi lupefiasco
i dont know how i could use or extract the fibers for my potato plastic
it seems to have worked for you so could you tell me?
thanks

[mildred100]

What are glass plates? How do your glass plates look like? How do you think can I combine the bottom of the two glass plates? What's the shape of your glass plates?