Turning trash into treasure: Scientists transform waste plastics into high-value carbon materials

(Press-News.org) A new study offers a breakthrough solution to one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems: plastic pollution. Researchers have discovered how to transform discarded plastics into valuable carbon-based materials that can clean the environment and power next-generation energy devices.

The research, published in Sustainable Carbon Materials, reviews the latest technologies that convert waste plastics into functional carbon materials, including carbon nanotubes, graphene, porous carbon, and carbon quantum dots. These high-performance materials show promise for use in environmental remediation, batteries, and supercapacitors.

Every year, more than 390 million tons of plastics are produced worldwide, with a large portion ending up in landfills or the natural environment. Conventional disposal methods such as landfilling, mechanical recycling, and incineration are inefficient and often generate secondary pollution. In contrast, converting plastics into carbon materials not only reduces waste but also creates products with high economic and technological value.

“Our goal is to turn plastic waste from an environmental burden into a sustainable resource,” said corresponding author Dr. Gaixiu Yang of the Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion, Chinese Academy of Sciences. “By using advanced carbonization technologies, we can recover carbon from plastics and reuse it for energy and environmental applications.”

The review summarizes both traditional and emerging conversion methods, such as catalytic pyrolysis, one-pot synthesis, and flash Joule heating. The latter can convert plastic waste into high-quality graphene in just milliseconds, using less than 0.1 kilowatt-hour of energy per kilogram of material. Other processes enable the formation of carbon nanotubes and porous carbon with exceptional structural properties.

Beyond the chemistry, the researchers highlight real-world benefits. Waste-derived carbon materials can capture greenhouse gases like CO₂, remove heavy metals and antibiotics from wastewater, and serve as efficient electrodes in lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors. In one example, porous carbon derived from plastic waste achieved an energy storage capacity close to the theoretical limit of selenium batteries, while maintaining excellent cycling stability.

The team also discusses key challenges, including optimizing catalyst design, improving product selectivity, and scaling up production. They emphasize the need for integrated approaches that combine materials science, catalysis, and environmental engineering.

“This is a promising pathway toward a circular carbon economy,” said co-corresponding author Professor Yan Chen of South China University of Technology. “Transforming waste plastics into functional carbon materials could help close the loop between pollution control and renewable energy.”

As plastic waste continues to accumulate globally, the study provides a hopeful message: through scientific innovation, the same materials polluting our planet could one day help power a cleaner, more sustainable future.

 

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Journal reference: Yuan J, Yang G, Zhou X, Huang J, Chen Y. 2025. Functional carbon materials from waste plastics: synthesis and applications. Sustainable Carbon Materials 1: e002  https://www.maxapress.com/article/doi/10.48130/scm-0025-0005  

 

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About Sustainable Carbon Materials:

Sustainable Carbon Materials is a multidisciplinary platform for communicating advances in fundamental and applied research on carbon-based materials. It is dedicated to serving as an innovative, efficient and professional platform for researchers in the field of carbon materials around the world to deliver findings from this rapidly expanding field of science. It is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that publishes review, original research, invited review, rapid report, perspective, commentary and correspondence papers.

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