Friday, May 27, 2011

Chicken Feathers now used in making Plastics !!

Nature hasn’t made anything useless even a small little bee can produce honey. Till now the chicken feathers were considered useless and they were only used in making some low quality chicken feeds or mostly thrown away as garbage.

Almost billion tons of chicken feathers are produced each year worldwide, these feathers contains keratin a tough protein that is also present in the cow hoofs and other animals horns. If a thermoplastic film is made from keratin then it becomes too strong and tear resistant. Now by the use of Keratin Dr Yiqi Yang and his colleagues in USA “University of Nebraska Lincoln have found that, they can make tough plastic by the help of chicken feathers.

At the start the plastic made from it lacks in water resistance, but after the further hard work of Yang and his fellows they added another synthetic plastic making chemical to overcame it, they added methyl acrylate. Then the outcome was tremendous and the product was both tough and water resistant. This effort will increase the utilization of chicken feathers in making of different plastic products.

Now there is a lesson, that God had nothing made useless.

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