{"id":263,"date":"2018-11-05T10:34:34","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T09:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/?p=263"},"modified":"2018-11-05T10:35:57","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T09:35:57","slug":"plastic-waste-bid-to-fuel-hydrogen-cars-at-swansea-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/en\/news\/plastic-waste-bid-to-fuel-hydrogen-cars-at-swansea-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Plastic waste bid to fuel hydrogen cars at Swansea University"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Scientists have developed a way of turning plastic waste into hydrogen and hope it could one day fuel cars.<\/h2>\n<p>It involves adding a light-absorbing material to plastic, placing it in a solution and exposing it to sunlight.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Moritz Kuehnel, from Swansea University&#8217;s chemistry department, said it could be cheaper than recycling plastic as any plastic can be used and it does not need cleaning.<\/p>\n<p>Plastic waste has been a hot topic since the <a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/p04tjbtx\">BBC&#8217;s Blue Planet II aired<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of plastic used every year &#8211; billions of tonnes &#8211; and only a fraction of it is being recycled,&#8221; said Dr Kuehnel.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are trying to find a use for what is not being recycled.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/uk-43820199\">What are the alternatives to plastic?<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/science-environment-42264788\">Seven charts that explain the plastic pollution problem<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/business-43390938\">Cracking new ways to fight plastic waste<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/science-environment-44359614\">50 nations &#8216;curbing plastic pollution&#8217;<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;PET [polyethylene terephthalate] is the plastic most plastic bottles are made from and this can be recycled, but in practice it is not always recycled,&#8221; said Dr Kuehnel.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There are a number of reasons for this &#8211; one is that recycling in general isn&#8217;t cheap, so it&#8217;s easier to burn stuff or throw it on a landfill.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But even if you do recycle it, it needs to be very pure &#8211; so only PET, nothing else mixed in with it&#8230; and it has to be clean, no grease, no oil.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Potentially you need to wash it which is very expensive, and even if you do all of that, the plastic you get isn&#8217;t always as nice as virgin material.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s often not used to make plastic bottles because no-one wants to buy a cloudy bottle.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">How does it work?<\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-264\" src=\"http:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/103202537_plastics.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"624\" height=\"351\" srcset=\"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/103202537_plastics.jpg 624w, https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/103202537_plastics-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px\" \/><\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><\/figure>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">The plastic is cut and surface rubbed to make it rough<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">A photo catalyst, which is a material that can absorb sunlight and use the energy in it to transform it into a chemical energy, is added on to the plastic<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">It is then put into a particular type of alkaline solution<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Sunlight, or a solar simulator lamp which mimics sunlight, is shone on to it to produce the hydrogen<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr class=\"story-body__line\" \/>\n<p>Dr Kuehnel added: &#8220;The beauty of this process is that it&#8217;s not very picky. It can degrade all sorts of waste.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Even if there is food or a bit of grease from a margarine tub, it doesn&#8217;t stop the reaction, it makes it better.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The process produces hydrogen gas. You can see bubbles coming off the surface. You can use it, for example, to fuel a hydrogen car.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The work is being carried out with a laboratory in Cambridge and has received funding through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and an Austrian petrochemical company.<\/p>\n<p>Being able to roll the project out on an industrial level may take a few years.<\/p>\n<p>But Dr Kuehnel said the remains of the plastic could be recycled to make new plastic.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For PET, it consists of terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol &#8211; two components that make a chain that makes a polymer,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the process we degrade one bit, ethylene glycol. This is what produces hydrogen and CO2, and the other bit stays intact and remains in the solution.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We get the hydrogen fuel and we get a chemical we can use to make new plastic.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t make a full new plastic, we use just half of the material to make new plastic and the rest can be recycled &#8211; a clean, clear water bottle out of plastic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Read the complete post on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/uk-wales-45028705\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BBC.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have developed a way of turning plastic waste into hydrogen and hope it could one day fuel cars. It involves adding a light-absorbing material to plastic, placing it in a solution and exposing it to sunlight. Dr Moritz Kuehnel, from Swansea University&#8217;s chemistry department, said it could be cheaper than recycling plastic as any [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-hydrogen"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266,"href":"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions\/266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idrogeno.comune.spilamberto.mo.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}