Environment friendly solutions to waste disposal today come up from every corner, even the most unlikely ones. This is just the age that we live in. Even cigarette butts are likely to become a powerful fuel when recycled in the not so distant future, or at least that is what scientists from the Seoul National University in South Korea.
The scientists in question have conducted extensively studies on the possibility of recycling and re-use of one of world’s most littered item – cigarette ends. They have come up with a theory that if proven right will change not only the way we think about cigarettes but also the whole course in the development of professional rubbish removal services.
When digging in the technical data of the Korean’s research, it becomes clear that the whole process actually consists of one simple step. The result however sounds like a miracle – the junk that cigarette butts present is transformed into a coating for the electrodes of super capacitors, which are basically electrochemical items that are used with the sole purpose of storing large amounts of energy.
The proposed conversion technique is known as pyrolysis. The process occurs with the burning of cellulose acetate fibers (the staff cigarette filters are made from). They are burnt until the remaining material is transformed into simple carbon based material.
Usually super capacitors are made from carbon, grapheme and carbon nanotubes. These materials however are pretty expensive and not so efficient. Actually, according to the data that have been released by the University of Seoul’s science team, the results achieved with the process of burning cigarette butts shows much greater performance levels than the methods that have been employed up until now in the industry.
The project is still far away from its complete form. If in the future the results are still as promising as they are now, this will mean that two birds are hit with one stone. On one hand it means that there will be an easy and much cheaper way to produce and store large amounts of energy. On the other, one of the largest causes for littering the world will be eliminated. So, cigarette ends might very well change the world we live in, the way we look at the habit of smoking and last but not least, many of the approaches in the rubbish removal industry.