Aduro Clean Tech Chemistry Explained in Simple Terms Part 2 $ADUR

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]This video is aduro chemistry to a child part two. You must first watch the first video or you won't understand what I'm talking about in this video. But just a short refresher, Aduro Clean Technologies discovered a plastic recycling technology that nobody in the world has. This is a monomer called ethylene. As you can see, it has two carbons and it has four hydrogens. As you can see, carbons are connected with a double bond. Each carbon has four connections. And I asked you to remember this. 1 2 3 4. That's for this carbon.

[00:00:46]And for this carbon, 1 2 3 4. Carbon has to have four connections. If it doesn't have four connections, it is not happy and it will look for ways to use that missing connection to connect to something else. So again, just remember that mono means one. So when I say monomer, it's one sequence mono for one.

[00:01:14]So this monomer is one block of ethylene. When you stitch those blocks together in a sequence like this, it becomes a polymer. Polymer means many and it's just another name for uh for plastic.

[00:01:36]But when you do stitch them together, you get something like this. You get a sequence of this that repeats but instead of a double carbon connection each carbon is connected with a single bond but still each carbon maintains those four connections. So if we look at this carbon 1 2 3 4 it still has four connections. So what aduro technology does it selectively cuts these uh carbontocarbon connections into shorter molecules that only contain between five to 14 carbons like these individual carbons only 5 to 14 and polymers like this can contain thousands of carbons in one sequence because this sequence can go on for a long time. So when aduro cuts carbon tocarbon connection it creates a shorter molecules that as I said before contain between five to 14 carbons and this classifies as nafta and nafta is used to make these monomers.

[00:02:45]And if you go from Nafta to monomer and to polymer and from polymer back to Nafta then you have achieved plastic circularity because you can reuse that NAFTA to make monomers again to make plastic again. Now in the previous video I used terms such as molecular scissors and Aduro Tech cuts these carbontocarbon bonds as if it had scissors. Then it donates hydrogen to stabilize the new molecules because remember carbon needs four connections. Also all of this happens at lower temperatures. So in this video I'm going to tell you how and why because let's be honest there are no scissors. Okay. In order to understand how Aduro is able to cut these carbon to carbon connections at lower temperatures, we need to understand what a connection is and what exactly is being connected. As you can see here, this polymer has a bunch of carbons and hydrogens. But what exactly are carbons and hydrogens? Well, they appear on the chemical periodic table. Okay, but what are they? They are atoms. Carbon is one type of an atom and hydrogen is another type of an atom. Think of a car. A car is an atom and carbon is one brand or model of a car. And hydrogen is another brand or model of a car. An atom contains protons, neutrons, and electrons. Okay? So in the middle there are protons and neutrons. And under outer shell there are electrons. And now this is a carbon. And carbon has six protons in the middle. And it has six neutrons in the middle in that center called nucleus. And then it has under outer shells it has six electrons. Two of them are on on the first outer shell and then four of them are under outer shell. Now do you remember how carbon needs four connections? Well, there are four electrons on the outside. So maybe electrons have something to do with connections. So stick around to find out. Now, hydrogen atom only has one proton in the middle and one electron on the outer shell. It doesn't have any neutrons. But why? If we go back to the carbon atom, notice the pluses and minuses. The pluses are for protons in the middle. Protons have positive charges. Electrons on the outside, they have negative charges. And as you know the phrase opposite attract. Well, this is important. Pay attention. You will later understand Aduro if you grab this concept. Opposite charges attract and the same charges do the opposite. So all the protons in the middle, okay, with positive charges want to get away from each other, okay? And neutrons, they have no charge. And like neutrons, neutral, neutral, you get the point.

[00:06:24]They serve as a glue. They keep the protons together so that they don't fly away from each other. Now the reason why um hydrogen doesn't have any neutron is because there's only one proton in the middle. So it doesn't need any glue to to keep it running away from from other protons. Right now because electrons the electrons on the outside have an opposite charge to protons they are attracted to protons. So they don't fly away because they are attracted to the middle to that nucleus but in relation to the other electrons they want to stay away but because they are not inside the nucleus or the center they don't need any glue um to keep them together. they can just stay away from each other and fly on the outside but at the same time they are attracted to to the center the center that's positively or have opposite charge than the electrons on the outside. So through these forces everything gets kept together. So if we have two carbons like this side by side, how can we connect them together? Well, we can put them together. We can get them close together like this. Okay, we can make them overlap and we can make them share two electrons together. One electron comes from this carbon, right? the other electron comes from this carbon. So they share it in the middle and then of course they have other electrons on the outside that are not shared together of course. And this is essentially a single carbontocarbon connection by having two electrons being shared. Now because these electrons all the electrons have negative charge and both of these centers contain protons which are positively charged.

[00:08:48]These electrons are attracted or they are pulled towards both of these centers. Right? This is negative. Both of them are negative. They are attracted or pulled towards the positive. The same thing here. Both of these are negative and they are attracted to that center that's positive. Or another way you can say is that these two centers pull those electrons to each other maintaining that connection between the two carbon atoms. So now that you understand what a connection actually is, we can talk about what it takes to break that connection. And and one more thing now it doesn't matter if the carbons are connected together or if carbon is connected to hydrogen. Either way a connection is a single connection is when the two atoms share two electrons. So if I'm a durocan technologies I want to break the connection between the two carbons. But how do I do it? Well, in chemistry, there are two ways to make the divorce happen. Homolytic cleavage and heterolytic cleavage. In homolytic cleavage, carbon A takes its own electron back and carbon B or carbon 2 takes back its own electron and they both stop sharing their electrons. In heterolic cleavage, one of the carbons steals both of the electrons and leaves the other carbon with with nothing or with the remaining electrons that weren't being shared. An aduro uses homolytic cleavage so that each carbon takes its own electron and stops sharing them. But how? Well, you apply energy.

[00:10:53]It's called activation energy because carbontocarbon connections are very strong. It takes a lot of energy to make these electrons go their separate ways and thus break the connection. I mean plastic doesn't just fall apart on its own. It takes centuries in landfills.

[00:11:13]And for this reason paralysis applies incredible amount of heat to break these bonds. But at the same time it breaks everything else too. Aduro is able to break that connection with much energy.

[00:11:29]But again how why is Aduro able to achieve this divorce with less input?

[00:11:36]And the answer lies in the catalyst.

[00:11:40]Aduro introduces metallic catalysts. And this catalyst is intended to weaken the carbontocarbon connection allowing aduro to break it with less energy. Metallic catalyst which by the way is in a liquid form is brought close to the carbon to carbon connection of the polymer and the catalyst has a positive charge. Remember how I asked you to remember electrons on the outside have a negative charge? What happens when opposites are introduced to each other? Yes, they attract. So if a catalyst gets close to the atoms electron, they now have opposite charges. So they attract each other. So when the positively charged catalyst approaches a negatively charged electron, it literally pulls it away. It pulls it it pulls it away from the center. Now the strength of the connection depends on how far the the electrons are from the center. The further they are away from the center, the weaker the connection. the closer they are to the center, the the stronger the connection. So, so again if those two are sharing okay are sharing the two electrons and then we have um a positively charged catalyst that approaches uh the carbontocarbon connection.

[00:13:21]electrons are pulled towards that catalyst and the catalyst pulls away pulls away these two electrons away from these two centers and thus weakening the connection. Now that this connection has been weakened, the temperature and pressure of the water in Aduro's process is sufficient enough to break that bond. It is sufficient enough to have those electrons separate and go their own ways. But without that positively charged catalyst that pulled away those electrons, this wouldn't have been possible. Okay? And it the temperature and the energy would have had to be as huge as it is for paralysis to achieve the same thing. But the catalyst again that's positively charged approaches the negative negatively charged electrons pulls them away weakening the connection and because of that aduro is able to apply less energy to achieve the same job of making the divorce happen. Now this divorce only happened between the carbontocarbon connections. But why didn't the carbon to hydrogen bond also break? Remember how I told you that in the previous video when paralysis applies this huge amount of heat, it breaks everywhere. So sometimes it breaks the carbon connection, other times it breaks the hydrogen to carbon connection. But Aduro is able to selectively only cut the carbon tocarbon connection but not cut the hydrogen to carbon connection. Why? Again, these are two carbon atoms. Look at them. How many other shells do they have for the electrons? Well, one and two.

[00:15:29]Now, look at the hydrogen. How many other shells does it have? One. Which distance is further away from the center?

[00:15:43]This distance with two other shells or this distance with one other shell?

[00:15:51]Of course, this one is closer than this one. So when you have hydrogen involved because of the distance between the electron and the center is shorter it is much more difficult to break it.

[00:16:08]It takes more energy to break it. So Aduro is able to adjust the pressure and temperature to break the carbontocarbon connection and not break the hydrogen to carbon connection because this connection takes more energy to break because hydrogen had has electron that's closer to the center making it stronger connection.

[00:16:39]That's wonderful. But as I said in part one, when this carbontocarbon connection is broken, this creates a problem, right? Because now we have two carbons that are missing the fourth connection.

[00:17:04]This carbon is only connected one, two, three. And this carbon is only connected one, two, three. How many connections does each carbon need? Four connections.

[00:17:16]How many connections do these carbons have? Three connections. This is where the magic happens. Aduro addresses that missing connection and it provides a hydrogen donor for the hungry um for the hungry carbon with something like glycerol. But again, how this is the chemical composition of glycerol. This is the hydrogen donor. And as you can see, it has a lot of hydrogens here.

[00:17:45]This is good because we need a hydrogen supply to keep the carbons that have fourth uh connections broken. We need to provide them with a hydrogen to keep them happy. Otherwise, they're going to grab to something else and create molecules that are just random, destroying the final product. And the catalyst here does the same thing by weakening the the connections here. Then once the connections are liberated, so you have a a catalyst that approaches right glycerol and it uh because it's positively charged, it pulls away the electrons away from the centers weakening the connection and this liberates hydrogen and gives it to the hungry carbon.

[00:18:40]But this reaction happens milliseconds before breaking the carbon to carbon connection of the polymer. If if if this reaction happened after the carbon would have already reacted and formed some kind of random molecules. So the way to think about it is like if you're getting a divorce, the new girlfriend is already waiting for you. That's what happens. The break happens and the hydrogen donor is already waiting to be donated. And the moment it happens, carbon grabs it immediately to satisfy the requirement for the fourth connection. But again, how is this possible that the donor is already ready before the carbontocarbon connection is broken? Look at the glycerol chemical structure. Where can the hydrogen be donated from? Well, it can be pulled from um from carbon, right? Here's a carbon to hydrogen connection. Or it can be pulled away from oxygen. We already know from the previous part in the video that breaking the connection between the hydrogen and carbon is pretty hard because remember hydrogen had electrons very close to the nucleus requiring them more energy to break them. So instead of breaking the hydrogen to carbon connection, it is better to go after the hydrogen and oxygen connection. Also, oxygen is an electron hog. Oxygen is greedy for electrons. Oxygen has six electrons on the outer shell, but it needs eight to be stable. So oxygen is always looking for new electrons. Therefore, when aduro introduces a catalyst to glycerol, hydrogen to oxygen connection breaks easily.

[00:21:04]However, there's a problem. How many electrons does hydrogen have?

[00:21:10]How many electrons are needed to be shared with anybody?

[00:21:16]two electrons, one needs to come from hydrogen and one electron needs to come from oxygen in order for the connection to be there. Right? And remember how I told you that the divorce can happen in two ways. One way is two electrons go their separate ways. And one is when part when one party steals both of the electrons. Well, oxygen is greedy for electrons. Therefore with the help of the catalyst it takes both of the electrons and now that this happened hydrogens is left with no electrons because it only has one and that one has been taken. So how can hydrogens be donated or connected to the hungry carbon if it is if it is missing an electron that is absolutely needed to make the connection with carbon? Well, Aduro's catalyst doesn't only help oxygen steal the electrons from hydrogen but it also sources the missing electrons from the glycerol molecule. As the glycerol is converted into smaller molecules, it must give up electrons to remain chemically balanced. So essentially this glycerol molecule gets destroyed. It is sacrificed to make the process work. Without the electrons and hydrogen, it breaks down into lower valued uh products that eventually get discarded. Once glycerol has given up its electrons, it cannot be reused as a hydrogen donor again. But considering that glycerol is cheap and that so that's not an issue. That's part of the operating costs to make the process work. In summary, now you know how aduro is able to selectively cut carbontocarbon bonds. In order for the electrons to get separated and go their separate ways, Aduro uses a catalyst to move the electrons away from the centers and thus weakening them, thus weakening the connection. This allows Aduro to break the bonds with less energy. Then the catalyst also weakens the bonds of the hydrogen donor to separate hydrogen and electrons to satisfy the hungry carbons. The result is that Aduro is able to create Nafta that goes directly into a steam cracker to make plastic circularity possible.