During the 2021 pandemic, we were throwing away 3 million face masks every minute. Scientists sounded the alarm early on, but the response to deal with it has seen a lot of it end up in our waterways.
In fact, an estimated 26,000 metric tons (28,660 tons) of non-degradable plastic waste associated with the pandemic, from medical supplies to online shopping packaging, has entered the world’s oceans, creating a very real and alarming impact on marine habitats. poses an imminent threat. .
A team of researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) has developed a single-step, organic solvent-free hydrothermal process that converts polyethylene-based plastic bags and polypropylene-based surgical masks into carbon dots.
Carbon dots, carbon-based nanomaterials, have attracted a lot of research interest due to their advantageous attributes such as high stability and electron mobility, and are widely used in biological imaging, environmental monitoring, chemical analysis, targeted drug delivery, It is used in disease treatment and as an anticancer drug. counterfeit.
The global market value of carbon dots is expected to reach US$6.412 billion by 2025, up from US$2.496 billion in 2019. But until now, turning plastic into carbon dots has been slow and involved the use of toxic chemicals and solvents in the process. .
Now, a team from New York University has developed a breakthrough, a single-step hydrothermal oxidizing approach that upcycles polyethylene plastic bags and polypropylene surgical masks into 1-8 nm fluorescent carbon dots. . The process, which researchers estimate to be slightly more expensive than current plastic recycling methods, is cost-effective given the market for carbon dot technology. You can safely process damaged plastics.
The researchers found that the new method costs about $3,670 per ton, compared to nearly $1,000 for existing mechanical and chemical recycling methods. The final product has a market value of approximately $1,800 per kilogram of plastic ($3,970 per pound).
“The new method our team developed is a cost-effective and safe method that can be easily implemented to significantly reduce the amount of toxic plastics released into ecosystems,” NYUAD’s Bioengineering.
Plastic recycling has led to innovative secondary uses for waste, such as bike paths, office furniture, portable speakers, floating green spaces, beautiful art, and fuels of all kinds. Scientists have even used single-use plastic bags to create carbon nanotubes for use in solar panels, computers, batteries and other technologies.
But researchers believe the method could provide the scale needed to impact the global single-use plastic problem.
This study was published in the journal green chemistry.
Source: New York University Abu Dhabi
