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Fryer Oil Into Things, Why Not?
Let’s make a deal… I draw something
And you make it!
With cooking oil and a 3D printer.
Because you can!
Recently researchers at the University of Toronto found a way to turn oil from a deep fryer into a light-sensitive plastic for 3D printers.
There are lots of reasons not to eat greasy deep-fried fast food.
And the challenges involved with disposing of used cooking oil that result in clogged sewers.
Used cooking oil is a major global environmental problem.
So, researchers under Sympson, an environmental chemist and director of the Environmental NMR Centre at U of T Scarborough…decide to have a solution.
“We found that McDonald’s waste cooking oil has excellent potential as a 3D printing resin” ~Sympson.
In order to turn cooking oil into usable resin it requires a straightforward chemical process.
Simpson and his team used a straightforward one-step chemical process in the lab, using about one liter of used cooking oil to make 420 milliliters of resin.
The resin was then used to print a plastic butterfly.