Along with a staggering waste of human lives, the pandemic has produced a waste crisis of a different sort: all the masks, gloves, and other single-use personal protective equipment thrown away. One team offer a potential solution, having found a way to recycle surgical masks into something that tackles an even bigger problem: climate change.
Professor Anvar Zakhidov of Russia’s National University of Science and Technology and researchers at three Mexican institutions disinfected waste surgical masks and dipped them in graphene ink. Heat processing then converted the masks into electrodes, while mask material processed in a different way was used as separating material to produce supercapacitors.
They describe the manufacturing process and performance indicators in the Journal of Energy Storage.
Used Surgical Masks Can Be Recycled For Energy Storage
