Discarded cigarette butts are a major waste disposal and environmental pollution hazard. But chemists at the University of Nottingham have discovered that cigarette butt-derived carbons have ultra-high surface area and unprecedented hydrogen storage capacity.
The research was carried out by Robert Mokaya, Professor of Materials Chemistry, and Troy Scott Blankenship, an undergraduate project student, in the School of Chemistry and has been published in the academic journal Energy and Environmental Science.
Professor Mokaya said: “We have utilised cigarette butt waste as starting material to prepare energy materials that offer unprecedented hydrogen storage properties. This may not only address an intractable environmental pollution problem – cigarette butts – but also offers new insights into converting a major waste product into very attractive hydrogen storage materials.”
Hydrogen is attractive as a fuel because whether it is burned to produce heat or reacted with air in a fuel cell to produce electricity, the only by-product is water.
Read the complete article published by The University Of Nottingham, 31 October 2017.
