Plastic waste comes back in black as pristine graphene, thanks to ACDC.
That's what Rice University scientists call the process they employed to make efficient use of waste plastic that would otherwise add to the planet's environmental woes. In this instance, the lab of Rice chemist James Tour modified its method to make flash graphene to enhance it for recycling plastic into graphene.
The lab's study appears in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano.
Simply, instead of raising the temperature of a carbon source with direct current, as in the original process, the lab first exposes plastic waste to around eight seconds of high-intensity alternating current, followed by the DC jolt.
The products are high-quality turbostratic graphene, a valuable and soluble substance that can be used to enhance electronics, composites, concrete and other materials, and carbon oligomers, molecules that can be vented away from the graphene for use in other applications.
"We produce considerable amount of hydrogen, which is a clean fuel, in our flashing process," said Rice graduate student and lead author Wala Algozeeb.
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