… And what happens with the other chemicals and elements, mainly the carbon? Does it spit out graphite dust or something, or does it just spits out the good ol carbon dioxide?
The paper refers to the by products as “value added” and lists by products : “The major oxidation products detected after 22 h were formate and acetate (from pretreated cellulose), as well as glycolaldehyde (GAld) dimer and glycolate (from pretreated PET), respectively“
Later mentioning no detectable CO2 was produced when they analyzed it.
So at least it doesn’t seem to be the worst thing considering we burn a lot of plastics and waste today.
We could ALSO stop producing and using so much damn plastic. Just sayin’.
The problem isnt plastic, the problem is a disposable society.
as long as we have a disposable society, we’re gonna generate monstrous piles of of waste. And its gonna be the same for whatever replaces plastic, and then we’ll be having these conversations about that material.
We could recycle bottle plastic instead of burning it to make hydrogen. Take two steps back an this is stupid.
“…in a petri dish”
But seriously, this doesn’t make any sense to my ( chemisty course flunking ) head:
They have made a device that uses sunlight to break down plastic waste and turn it into hydrogen. And it’s not just a lab curiosity. The team made it using simple methods and materials, and have tested it outside in the sunlight.
Where does the carbon go? What about the oxygen? Does the sun burn them? I don’t get it
I suspect that the leftovers can be processed more easily. It would be nice of the article to talk about what residuals are left.
burn any hydrocarbon, you get hydrogen/water and C02.
It was very nice to see some good news today. If this can go at scale, then it will solve a whole lot of problems.
