Engineering professors and students at the University of California – Riverside have demonstrated a method they hope could “solve two of Earth’s biggest problems in one stroke” – recycling plastic waste such as plastic bottles into a nanomaterial useable in batteries.
As battery storage becomes an ever more present necessity – used in large-scale energy storage projects through to electric vehicles – sourcing materials traditionally necessary to make batteries are straining, and more sustainable alternatives are necessary.
Two engineering professors at the University of California Riverside, Mihri and Cengiz Ozkan, have been working with their students to create improved energy storage materials from a range of sources, trying everything from glass bottles to beach sand, Silly Putty to portabello mushrooms.
Their latest effort, however, has the ground-breaking potential to address not only the need for sustainable battery materials but also the need to recycle and eliminate tonnes of plastic waste.
“Thirty percent of the global car fleet is expected to be electric by 2040, and high cost of raw battery materials is a challenge,” said Mihri Ozkan, a professor of electrical engineering in UCR’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering.
“Using waste from landfill and upcycling plastic bottles could lower the total cost of batteries while making the battery production sustainable on top of eliminating plastic pollution worldwide.”
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