Microwaving plastic waste is generating clean reusable hydrogen

Previous attempts at stripping hydrogen from plastic had involved using thermal conversion chambers to pump out heats of up to 850°C to decompose plastic into a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide called syngas. But as you can imagine, this method requires a ton of energy and serious financial backing to achieve on a single-use basis, with £130 million being the purported asking fee to build a handful of facilities across the UK.

The results of the experiment at Oxford’s Department of Chemistry may just put such initiatives on hold though. In a promising turn of events, Edwards and his team were able to strip up to 97% of the hydrogen contained within the plastic test samples in a very short matter of time, meaning we may be onto a low-cost alternative to thermal conversion chambers with no CO2 burden.

In a statement from the University, Edward revealed that this new process could ‘open up an entirely new area of catalysis in terms of selectivity’. He declared, ‘This offers a potential route to the challenge of the plastic waste Armageddon, particularly in developing countries as one route to the hydrogen economy – effectively enabling them to leap-frog the sole use of fossil fuels.’

It’s encouraging to learn that potential solutions are being developed right now, and that people refuse to adopt an apathetic attitude towards solving the plastic pollution issue. The typical rhetoric when discussing waste management may be inherently negative, and granted, the numbers emerging from annual reports appear insurmountable, but we have to continue to change, to innovate, and to find ways of protecting the sanctity of the planet whilst we’re here.

Could it really be that the plastic waste plaguing our land and oceans could soon become valuable livestock for the production of clean hydrogen fuel? Wouldn’t that just be a doozy.