Read the full story from the University of California – Riverside.
Engineering professors and their students have been working for years on creating improved energy storage materials from sustainable sources, such as glass bottles, beach sand, Silly Putty, and portabella mushrooms. Now they have turned plastic soda bottles into a nanomaterial for use in batteries. Though they don’t store as much energy as lithium-ion batteries, supercapacitors made with the material can charge much faster.
Associated journal article: Arash Mirjalili, Bo Dong, Pedro Pena, Cengiz S. Ozkan, Mihrimah Ozkan. Upcycling of Polyethylene Terephthalate Plastic Waste to Microporous Carbon Structure for Energy Storage. Energy Storage, 2020; DOI: 10.1002/est2.201
