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What is PET Plastic?

PET has been around since the 1940s when chemists experimented with polymers  to create textiles. The plastic’s popularity grew through the 1950s when researchers found a way to stretch PET into a thin sheet, this form being used mainly for video, photo, and packaging films. When the technology for blow-stretch molding was developed in the early 1970s, PET found a new form and its most notable use, PET bottles.  Patented in 1973 , PET bottles, compared to its container-predecessors (glass bottles, steel, and aluminum cans), were lightweight, safe, cheap, and recyclable. 

There are several kind of PET Sheet roll will listing bellows:

APET Sheet Roll / RPET Sheet Roll  /  PETG Sheet Roll / GAG Sheet Roll  /  ESD Antistatic PET Sheet Roll

Properties of PET

By looking at a polyethylene terephthalate property table, we can understand and gain insight into how it would be working with PET plastic. While there are  many variables at play , below, you will find a general material overview. Properties may vary slightly as there are different grades available.

Misconceptions of PET

Despite us interacting with PET daily, any mention of “PET” or “plastic” comes with a sense of taboo. We’ve associated the destruction of our climate with plastic waste. If you’re not picturing a polar bear surrounded by melting ice when “climate change” is mentioned, you’re probably imagining a sea of plastic floating in our oceans.

While PET is the most used plastic, it is also the most recycled. In 2017, 1.923 million tonnes of PET bottles were collected in Europe for recycling, seeing an increase of 2.9% from the previous year. In addition to that, the RPET recycled rate was around 58.2%. Besides thinking of PET as one of the culprits behind plastic pollution, a thought that crosses many people’s minds is PET’s harm to our health.

It is essential to acknowledge that many governments worldwide have agencies regulating and providing scientific advice on any risks associated with foods and beverages. PET has been approved by the Food and Drug Association, Health Canada, the European Food Safety Authority, and countless more as safe for contact with food and beverages. While antimony oxide is used during the making of PET, it is only over more extended periods of exposure to heat that trace amounts of antimony may migrate into the beverages bottled in PET. These antimony levels are far below the safety thresholds, and the small amounts that might be found in PET contained foods and beverages are not anything to be concerned about as it does not pose any health risk.

If you still feel hesitant, check out your local food and beverage agency’s requirements on the use of PET containers for edible products.

The Pros and Cons of PET Plastic

Despite the many uses of PET and its popularity, there are certain limitations to it. Below we’ve compared the most common pros and cons when working with PET plastic.

PET vs PETG

Although PET is available as a homopolymer (a polymer where every monomer unit of the chain is the same), you can alter it to produce copolymers (a polymer derived from more than one species of monomer) desirable for specific applications. A known copolymer of PET is PETG, which is polyethylene terephthalate glycol-modified. One of the biggest misconceptions, especially in the 3D-printing filament industry, is that PET and PETG are the same. Unfortunately, this is not the case. PETG isn’t made from simply adding glycol to PET. PETG is formed during the initial polymerization process, where monomers/other components are combined to build the polymer up. Below you can see a table of the differences between the two.

How Is PET Used?

Besides food and beverage containers, PET is a known and familiar material used to create clothing, furnishing, textiles, and more in its polyester form. Famous for its durability and resistance to many chemicals, it retains its shape well and is easy to look after. Besides its use for consumables and wearables, polyethylene terephthalate has been used by the music and marine vessel industries and as fabrics for conveyor belts and fabric coating.

The most common application done with PET is injection molding. Injection molding is the manufacturing process for producing various parts by injecting molten material into a mold and rapidly cooling it off. Once molten PET gets injected into pre-form molds, they can then be blow-molded to create the desired shape after cooling off. We typically see this when making PET bottles, but this same technique is beneficial when producing shampoo bottles, trays, and watering cans. 

A lot can be done with PET, given its universality, but what we’ve mentioned is just the beginning.