The ever-increasing production and use of plastics over the last half century has created a huge environmental problem for the world. Plastic waste should be viewed as an invaluable feedstock composed as it is mainly of hydrogen and carbon, two elements of huge importance in energy generation and numerous other applications. In this work, we report a straightforward, rapid method for the deconstruction of various plastic feedstocks using microwaves and abundant and inexpensive iron-based catalysts as microwave-susceptors to initiate this catalytic process. The microwave-initiated, one-step process typically takes some 30 – 90 seconds to transform a sample of mechanically - pulverised plastic into hydrogen (reached at ca. 90 vol.% of the gaseous products) and value-added carbon materials, predominantly multi-walled carbon nanotubes.This opens up an entirely new area of great potential in terms of selectivity and offers a potential route to the use of plastic waste Armageddon.<br/>This rapid one-step process for converting plastic to hydrogen and solid carbon significantly simplifies the usual processes of dealing with plastic waste and demonstrates that over 97% of hydrogen in plastic can be extracted in a very short time, in a low-cost method with no CO2 burden. The new method represents an attractive potential solution for the problem of plastic waste; instead of polluting our land and oceans, plastics could be used as a valuable feedstock for producing clean hydrogen fuel and value-added carbon products.

Turning plastic waste into hydrogen and high-value carbons

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.