National Geographic Spain has published an interesting article about how to produce graphene from recycled plastic. According the article, plastic waste from cars could have a second useful life in the form of graphene thanks to the development of a new recycling technique.
The source of the article is the study “Upcycling end-of-life vehicle waste plastic into flash Graphene” carried out by a scientific team led by Professor James Tour, an expert in materials science and nanoengineering, from the University of Rice (Houston, USA). The article has been published by Nature in Open Access.
Image extracted from the video published on the website of Tour's research group
“To successfully transform automobile plastic into high-quality graphene, the scientists used a procedure known as instantaneous Joule heating”, explain the article. The process, in which an electrical discharge heats carbon and turns it into graphene, uses low-cost infrastructure and does not require prior separation or sorting of plastics. [Know more about the process: Go to the video!]
