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Chemists have turned microwaves, plastic bags, milk bottles and other supermarket packaging into a clean source of hydrogen.
Plastic waste can already be converted into hydrogen by other methods, and commercial plastic processing plants are being built. However, with the new recycling method, plastics should be recycled faster and with less energy consumption.
Peter Edwards of the University of Oxford (UK) says he and his colleagues wanted to “resist the stark reality” of 1.5 million tonnes of plastic waste a year in the UK alone. Since hydrogen makes up about 14 percent by weight, it could become a new source for countries developing clean ways to produce hydrogen to help combat climate change.
Most conventional plastic conversion methods first require the waste to be heated to a very high temperature above 750 ° C, where the plastic decomposes into syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, from the which still has to be extracted hydrogen.
Edwards and his team shredded the plastic with a kitchen shredder and mixed it with a catalyst: iron oxide and alumina. Then, when the mixture was exposed to a 1000-watt microwave generator, the catalysts formed hot spots in the plastic and separated the hydrogen, releasing 97 percent of the plastic gas in a matter of seconds.
The remaining solid consists practically of carbon nanotubes alone. This one-step method has the advantage that only the catalyst is heated and not the entire mass of the plastic, so less energy is sufficient because the plastic does not absorb the microwave.
These results provide an “attractive potential solution for plastic waste,” Edwards said. Although only small-scale experiments have been conducted, using only 300 grams of plastic at a time, larger experiments have already been planned.
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