Ediger said:
Nalgene, which I always thought was a name for the type of plastic (HPDE??)
they used. But apparently not; instead it's the name of the company that makes
um.
Correct. Nalgene was a commercial and laboratory supply company long
before they got into the consumer market. Some lab employees began using their
HDPE bottles on camping trips and their friends noticed and liked them, and
thus a whole new side of the business was born.
I've seen some storage containers and appliance hoppers (as for blenders and
food processors) that were clear, hard, and inflexible that could have been
Lexan. There may be a more flexible variety for lab use??
Not as far as I know. Lexan is always hard and inflexible.
PE in my book stands for Polyethylene. What the TE stands for is a mystery for
the moment.
PETE is polyethylene terephthalate, as Diana already pointed out. By the
way, this is only barely related to simple polyethylene, like LDPE and HDPE.
I think LDPE may stand for Low Density Polyethylene???
Along the same lines, I'd suggest that HDPE stands for High Density
Polyethylene??
Correct on both counts.
PP--
I'm guessing it's Polypropylene??
Correct again. :-)
Somewhere there is something called Linear Polyethylene. You can tear it easily
in one direction but not at all in the other. Don't know where it fits in.
Linear polyethylene is chemically the same as LDPE and HDPE but is
specially made so that the molecules mostly line up with each other instead of
being randomly entangled. Imparts some different properties.
V--is this vinyl?
Probably, but who knows?
PS--is this Polystyrene?
Correct again. Styrofoam is also polystyrene, but it has had air or
nitrogen blown into it while it is soft to make bubbles. Makes it very light
and a good insulator, thus the use in coffee cups, etc.
About a year or so ago on another forum that tolerates me, an errant post
mentioned that soft-drink bottles (PETE) should not be reused for water bottles
on account of some chemical breakdown that takes place after the product is
removed.
Theoretically PETE could be degraded by acidic or basic compounds because
it is a polyester, and esters are sensitive to hydrolysis by acid or base (same
as nylon, a polyamide). This should also happen during their use with the
original contents, though, and should not be exascerbated by reuse with plain
water. These containes are actually quite handy, because they are very robust.
You can repeatedly smash a PETE soda bottle flat and reinflate it with nothing
more than cosmetic damage. I would expect that if significant degredation was
occurring the bottles would soon weaken and crack, which does not seem to be
the case. I have not seen that warning, however. I have reused such pop
bottles without incident (so far ;-)).
I've never noticed that water spoils or goes bad--what nutrients are in it that
would feed microbes?
There are hopefully no nutrients in your water! The danger comes from the
leaching of increasing amounts of chemicals from the container over time. Pure
water stored in glass or stainless steel should be good essentially forever.
Algae growth could be a problem in transparent containers, though, even glass.
Mark Minton
