Waste cooking oil turned into 3D printing resin

The advance by researchers at the University of Toronto Scarborough makes it more economical to produce 3D printing resin, and the plastics made from it are biodegrade. The work is described in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

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“The reasons plastics are a problem is because nature hasn’t evolved to handle human-made chemicals,” said Andre Simpson, a professor at U of T Scarborough’s department of physical and environmental sciences who developed the resin in his lab. “Because we’re using what is essentially a natural product – in this case fats from cooking oil – nature can deal with it much better.”

Simpson found that the molecules used in commercial resins were similar to fats found in cooking oils, leading him to ask if a viable resin could be created using waste cooking oil.

In their research, the team acrylated the waste cooking oil in a one-step lab process, using about one litre of used cooking oil to make 420 millilitres of resin. The addition of a photoinitiator readied the product for use on a commercial 3D printer.