Wagamaga OP t1_j9653lz wrote
The amount of plastic waste produced globally has doubled over the past two decades — and plastic production is expected to triple by 2050 — with most of it ending up in landfills, incinerated or otherwise mismanaged, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Some estimates suggest only 5% is actually being recycled.
“Waste plastic is rarely recycled because it costs a lot of money to do all the washing, sorting and melting down of the plastics to turn it into a material that can be used by a factory,” said Kevin Wyss, a Rice graduate student and lead author on a study published in Advanced Materials that describes how he and colleagues inthe lab of chemist James Tour used their flash Joule heating technique to turn plastic into valuable carbon nanotubes and hybrid nanomaterials.
“We were able to make a hybrid carbon nanomaterial that outperformed both graphene and commercially available carbon nanotubes,” Wyss said.
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