As reported by Science Daily, the researchers, from the University of Cambridge, developed the system, which can convert two waste streams into two chemical products at the same time and, how they clame, this has been achieved in a solar-powered reactor for the first time.
How is explained, the reactor converts the carbon dioxide (CO2) and plastics into different products that are useful in a range of industries. In tests, CO2 was converted into syngas, a key building block for sustainable liquid fuels, and plastic bottles were converted into glycolic acid, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry. The system can easily be tuned to produce different products by changing the type of catalyst used in the reactor.
"Converting waste into something useful using solar energy is a major goal of our research," said Professor Erwin Reisner from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, the paper's senior author. "Plastic pollution is a huge problem worldwide, and often, many of the plastics we throw into recycling bins are incinerated or end up in landfill." Reisner also leads the Cambridge Circular Plastics Centre (CirPlas), which aims to eliminate plastic waste by combining blue-sky thinking with practical measures.
Furthermore, it is pointed out how solar-powered 'recycling' technologies hold promise for addressing plastic pollution and for reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but to date, they have not been combined in a single process.
"A solar-driven technology that could help to address plastic pollution and greenhouse gases at the same time could be a game-changer in the development of a circular economy," said Subhajit Bhattacharjee, the paper's co-first author.
Reisner ads that "developing a circular economy, where we make useful things from waste instead of throwing it into landfill, is vital if we're going to meaningfully address the climate crisis and protect the natural world and powering these solutions using the Sun means that we're doing it cleanly and sustainably."
The research was supported in part by the European Union, the European Research Council, the Cambridge Trust, Hermann and Marianne Straniak Stiftung, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Erwin Reisner is a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.
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