(cont'd from yesterday's post)
Dr. Tour's team at Rice University in Texas can make graphene (about a kg/day) from garbage. A business hopes to scale up production to a ton per day in a year or two.
Just a "super-hot" flash of electricity aimed at a carbon-containing substance breaks the chemical bonds to re-order the atoms. Other elements in the substance escape as gases, leaving only the one-atom-thick lattice which is graphene.
Not only garbage, but anything containing carbon can be used for the process. That includes plastic water bottles and worn-out tires. Worthless trash that we struggle to handle now could be turned into something of great value. One more benefit . . carbon from that decomposing trash would now be captured in stable graphene and kept out of the environment.
"Mountains of plastic could be reduced to their component molecules and repurposed into something useful."
What an incredible innovation!
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