Millions of rubber gloves end up in incineration or landfill, but researchers at Aarhus University have now developed a technology that can turn the used gloves into a way to capture CO₂.
Millions of rubber gloves end up in incineration or landfill, but researchers at Aarhus University have now developed a technology that can turn the used gloves into a way to capture CO₂. This offers a potential alternative.
Every year, over 100 billion nitrile rubber gloves are produced. They are made from synthetic polymers - a material chemically related to plastic and derived from crude oil. The vast majority is used in the healthcare sector, and most are discarded after single use. This creates a massive amount of material waste globally. However, Simon Kildahl, a postdoc at the Department of Chemistry at Aarhus University, has moved a step closer to a way of recycling these gloves. In a new study published in the scientific journal CHEM, he and his colleagues demonstrate how they can transform waste rubber into a CO2 adsorbent in the laboratory. The potential, he explains, is significant.
"A plastic bottle can be recycled relatively easily, as we know from deposit-return systems. But other plastic materials are problematic because they cannot be reused in the same way. Therefore, they often end up being burned, which is currently the case for rubber gloves," he says.
"In our experiments, we converted the glove so that it can capture CO2 instead of becoming a waste product that releases CO2 and other harmful gases during incineration."
Read More: Aarhus University
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