Catalytic recycling of medical plastic wastes over La0.6Ca0.4Co1–Fe O3− pre-catalysts for co-production of H2 and high-value added carbon nanomaterials
Xiao Yu, Guoxing Chen, Marc Widenmeyer, Isabel Kinski, Xingmin Liu, Ulrike Kunz, Dominique Schüpfer, Leopoldo Molina‐Luna, Xin Tu, Gert Homm, Anke Weidenkaff
Abstract
In this work, waste medical masks collected from daily life usage were pyrolyzed and catalytically decomposed with perovskite-type La 0.6 Ca 0.4 Co 1– x Fe x O 3− δ pre-catalysts for co-production of carbon nanomaterials and H 2 . The influences of catalysis reaction temperature and Co/Fe ratio in the investigated pre-catalysts on the yields and selectivity of the gaseous products and carbon deposition were systematically studied. The physicochemical characteristics of the produced carbon nanomaterials were comprehensively characterized by the state-of-the-art techniques. La 0.6 Ca 0.4 Co 0.2 Fe 0.8 O 3– δ possessed the highest hydrogen and carbon nanomaterials yields at 850 °C among all the investigated pre-catalysts. Especially, this pre-catalyst showed an excellent performance during the 10 cycles of successive deconstruction of plastic wastes with the highest hydrogen yield of 34.33 mmol / g plastic at the 7th cycle. More importantly, carbon nanotubes generated had higher graphitic characteristics and fewer defects. The presented results demonstrated that the developed perovskite-type pre-catalyst is a promising candidate for the production of hydrogen and carbon nanotube composites for energy storge applications from medical waste plastics.