Page 1 of 1

Orange and avacado peel polymer

Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2025 4:43 pm
by 2pasalalp
Hi, Have been doing this super absorbent polymer that kiara has done and I have been using these type of methods

For the Preparation of the Orange peel Polymer, 6 full oranges were peeled, including as much
pith as possible and left to simmer in 50 mL of lemon juice for 1 hour. The orange peels were
then placed in a stainless pot (unreactive) filled with 500 mL of distilled water and left for 1 hour
before bringing it to a boil. After 45 minutes, a cheesecloth was used overnight to remove any
excess liquid. The strained orange solution was then stored in the fridge (up to 5 days).
Next, 2 avocados were peeled. The orange peels and the avocado skins were cut into extremely
fine pieces, mixed, and exposed to sunlight until they were fully dry (3-4 days).
The sun dried peels were then grinded into a powder. Half of the crushed mixture will serve as
the first variant: “the Sun-dried powder”. The remaining half was added to 100 mL of the
previously strained orange solution. The mixture was placed into the oven at 180 degrees Celsius
for 20 minutes. The baked mix was then grinded into a powder. This crushed mixture will serve
as the second variant: “the Oven-dried mixture”. The other half of the oven-dried mixture was
added to the remaining orange solution and baked for another 20 minutes to allow another step of
polymerization. This will serve as the third variant: “the Double Oven-dried mixture”. The 3
variants were stored in a dry location and ready for testing.

I tried this method but I have failed many times, the avacado and orange peels are not turning into a hydrogel

Re: Orange and avacado peel polymer

Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2025 7:02 pm
by LeirD
Hi!

It's hard to tell exactly where your experiment is going wrong, but I can try to help you find the problem more broadly. Here are couple things you could try to identify where you are going wrong:

1) Try to focus on specific steps that could be not 'doing their job' (don't think about the whole experiment not working, just think about each step)

2) Look up similar experiments online and see if they do different things than you, or have any tips/tricks that helped them make a polymer

More specifically for your experiment, I would make sure that you are adding the ground-up fruits to water, as (from my short research) that seems to be a vital step in making hydrogels.

Hope this helps!