Turn nylon bags into electricity

Instead of being buried or becoming a huge dump on the roadside, plastic bags can be recycled and become useful products such as ink, lubricants, even used to charge mobile phones. or laptop.

It is impossible to mix together so the quality of recycled plastic is very limited. The author of the study Vilas Pol of Argonne- National Laboratory (France) said the idea of ​​starting his research. "So, I think how can I go beyond this. You can use to create many products by combining these plastics together."

By putting pieces of plastic into the combustion chamber and heating them up, Pol can turn plastics into pure carbon balls a few microns in size. These spheres are thermal and electric so they are useful in making lubricants, inks, paints and gasoline and air filters. For example, we can use these spheres to make tires that reduce the heat generated from the friction of the wheel with the road surface, avoiding the rubber layer that can melt.

"They are also used to make anodes for lithium ion batteries, which can be recharged," Pol said . These are batteries commonly used for mobile phones and portable computers'. Previously, Pol studied the use of carbon nanotubes made from plastic bags through a similar process for many applications, including rechargeable batteries.

With special processing, nylon bags that seem to be removed and pollute the environment can turn into energy for many applications.

At high temperatures and pressures in the barrel, the plastic decomposes into many components. If in a tank filled with inert gas instead of air, the hydrogen in the plastic will be analyzed into substances primarily composed of hydrogen, which can be used as hydrogen fuel.

Instead of just melting the plastic and recycling through the method of extrusion into the mouth of the tube, Pol's method is to continue heating the plastic bags through melting points. He keeps the material in a closed container and accumulates pressure so that the material becomes hotter and turns into a gas.

Talking about Pol's new method, Nishkamraj Deshpande of the USA Space Association, a NASA contractor, said: 'With today's technology, the production of carbon spheres is very expensive. However, if Pol's process is commercialized, it will help solve an extremely important problem, which is plastic waste '. Pol is receiving a lot of suggestions for his work to develop a scale reactor outside the lab.