Syngas from waste plastics and water using Joule heating

Qing Ma, Yongjun Gao (), Chengcheng Cai, Tianfu Wang () and Ding Ma ()
Additional contact information
Qing Ma: Hebei University
Yongjun Gao: Hebei University
Chengcheng Cai: Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Tianfu Wang: Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Ding Ma: Peking University

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract The development of innovative, sustainable, and atom-economic methods to tackle the escalating problem of plastic pollution is crucial. A Joule-heating system capable of reforming waste plastics and water into syngas has been developed, which can process 2.5 g of waste plastic (equivalent to a whole plastic food bag) and 5.5 g through ten batches of reaction. Control experiments, kinetics, and in-situ experiments reveal that the proton hopping under the electric field is the key step in reforming gaseous hydrocarbons with water into syngas. Due to its high energy efficiency, this wet reforming system can utilize solar energy as the sole energy source, extracting syngas from waste plastic and water without the need for additional transition metal catalysts. Consequently, this approach offers an efficient strategy for storing solar energy in the form of syngas and offers a sustainable solution to the environmental challenges posed by the accumulation of plastic waste.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61051-2 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-61051-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-61051-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().