Coronavirus: the new era of plexiglass that is born with the pandemic (and how it helps health and the economy)

The German company that invented acrylic glass and today produces the two best-known brands – Plexiglas and Acrylite – reported that doubled its sales since the pandemic began.

“If the reason wasn’t so sad, we could be happy,” he told Forbes magazine. Claus Müller, owner of Rohm GmbH.

Meanwhile, its main competitor, Perspex, from the United Kingdom, has seen an even higher demand: between February and March it increased its production by 300%, according to local media reports.

A new age

And is that the arrival of the covid-19 has made this material It will go from being useful to being essential.

Its first uses in the fight against the coronavirus were less visible: on the “battlefront”, as a fundamental part of the medical diagnostic equipment used by health personnel who treat the infected.

But soon this material began to be adopted outside of hospitals as a key tool in the fight to contain the spread of the virus.

Acrylic dividers began to appear everywhere: from supermarket boxes to nursing homes and beauty salons.

In this way, it seeks to solve one of the main challenges presented by this pandemic: how to resume our normal activities while waiting for a vaccine or cure to stop the virus (something that experts say will take more than a year) to appear.

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Finding a way to go back to our usual routines – shopping, going to the gym, going out for drinks with friends – is not only important for our social life, but also it is fundamental for our economy, hit globally in ways not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

A recent article in the Forbes business magazine highlighting “our new life behind the plexiglass” states that while “for now these new To stoptions are baffling, they could save our economy and our lives“

How it came about

Although the coronavirus is making this material experience a boom in the 21st century, the truth is that it is a veteran product: this year it will be 87 years old.

It was patented by the German chemical company Röhm and Haas Company and, as the company itself says, It was by chance.

“In the 1930s, chemists at Röhm & Haas investigated how to create a type of transparent rubber.”

“One fine day, they kept an experimental mass on a window sill,” they explain. It was a sample of monomeric methyl methacrylate (or MMA) stored in a bottle.

“The next day, the scientists were puzzled to find that what was there was not rubber, but actually a new type of plastic.”

Sunlight had triggered a polymerization reaction, which caused the MMA to become an acrylic block that broke the vial.

What they created was methyl polymethacrylate, or polymethylmethacrylate, which has become known generically by its initials: PMMA.

The new material, which is the most transparent of plastics and unlike many is extremely hard, began to be used as glass substitute.

In fact, many nicknamed it “organic glass” or “synthetic glass.”

Increased use

The first boost PMMA received was during world war II (1939-45), when it was used by both the Allies and the Axis forces to manufacture windshields and aircraft turrets, among other uses.

In this way they minimized the damage in the event of a burst, since it was found that the acrylic chips generated less injuries, especially to the eyes, than the glass fragments.

After the war, it continued to be produced on an industrial scale and was adopted by other industries, in particular automotive and aviation, which took advantage of how light this new material was.

The Plexiglas brand, which is sold under the name Acrylite in the Americas, was joined by several competitors. In addition to the British Perspex, the best known are Lucite, Crylux, Polycast, Optix and Chemcast.

With impact resistance far superior to that of glass, half the weight, great ease of molding and the possibility of repairing superficial scratches (a polishing paste is used), acrylic began to be marketed in the form of granules or sheets of different thicknesses and colors.

Its use spread and began to be used in the construction and manufacture of furniture, signs, advertising signs, household appliances, glasses and laboratory equipment, among others.

It was also particularly useful for making aquariums and pools in zoos since, unlike glass, which with greater thickness has less transparency, plexiglass maintains its transparency regardless of thickness, and also reflects less.

With the arrival of new technologies, it began to be used to manufacture fiber optic cables, television screens, computers and cell phones, LED lights and solar panels.

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Furthermore, it was found that PMMA has good compatibility with human tissue, which led to it being used to produce prosthetics and implants, in addition to contact lenses.

The side negative

The explosive growth of the PMMA industry – which already in 2019 generated global revenue of about $ 6 billion, according to the market research company Adroit-, it will be bad news for our planet.

Like other plastics, it degrades very slowly and also it is very difficult to recycle: Within the seven groups into which plastic recycling is divided, it is in the last one, which is not usually accepted by recycling companies.

Therefore, all that extra acrylic that will be produced to prevent the coronavirus is likely to add at some point to the more than 9,000 million tons of plastic waste that already pollute our oceans.

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Proponents of this material claim that it is not so bad, as it also has ecological benefits: by replacing much heavier materials, it allows vehicles – cars, planes and boats – reduce your energy consumption.

Furthermore, they argue that its manufacture requires less energy than other products.

However, the origin of PMMA goes against the environment, since it is made from fossil fuels.

The fact that it requires crude oil to make it It also generates other problems, beyond ecological ones.

Market analysts like Adroit warn that the volatility of this hydrocarbon price, the availability of raw materials and the business “bottlenecks” could “hinder the growth” of the plexiglass industry.

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