Project summary
Project Summary
Plastic waste is a major environmental challenge with over 400 million tons/year are produced globally but only~10% recycled mechanically. Traditional mechanical recycling degrades polymer quality, while landfilling and incineration cause pollution and carbon emissions. Thermochemical conversion of plastic waste into fuels, chemicals, and value-added materials has received growing attention. In this process, catalysts play a critical role in improving energy efficiency, promoting targeted reactions, and improving product selectivity.
Carbon-based materials are central to modern battery research because they combine high electrical conductivity, chemical stability, low density, tunable structure, and relatively low cost. Their applications span nearly every component of a battery, including electrodes, conductive additives, current collectors, and solid-state electrolytes. This project will investigate the conversion of targeted plastic waste into a carbon material for battery energy storage application.
Project Objectives
- To investigate the feasibility of converting different types of plastic waste into carbon nanomaterials using thermochemical conversion techniques.
- To evaluate the effects of key process parameters, such as temperature, heating rate, residence time, and reaction atmosphere, on the yield, morphology, and quality of the carbon nanomaterials.
- To examine the influence of catalyst type and composition (e.g., Ni, Fe, Co, and bimetallic catalysts) on the growth, structure, and graphitization of carbon nanomaterials.
- To characterize the produced carbon nanomaterials using techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area analysis.
- To evaluate the effects of the obtained carbon nanomaterials on battery performance as anode, cathode or conductive additive.
Project Tasks
- Review recent research literature on plastic waste conversion, thermochemical processes, catalysts, and carbon nanomaterials.
- Select one type of plastic waste (e.g., PE, PP, PS, PET), clean and shred them.
- Select and prepare catalysts for the thermochemical conversion.
- Conduct experiments and produce carbon materials from plastic waste, while varying temperature, catalyst loading, heating rate, and residence time.
- Characterise the structural properties of the carbon materials, including SEM, XRD, TEM, and BET.
- Assess a battery’s performance (e.g., capacity, stability) using the carbon materials as anode, cathode or conductive additive.
Expected Learning Outcomes
- Reaction mechanisms of plastic thermochemical conversion
- Catalyst preparation and characterization
- Experimental skills and safe lab practices
- Scientific data analysis and interpretation
- Technical report and thesis writing
Research Environment and Supervision
This project will be conducted in the Particles and Catalysis Research Group at the UNSW School of Chemical Engineering. The group conducts research in heterogeneous catalysis, carbon dioxide utilisation, hydrogen technologies, photothermal catalysis, advanced materials characterisation, and battery study.
The project will be jointly supervised by Prof. Rose Amal and Dr. Lixue Jiang. The student will work closely with Partcat members and receive training in material synthesis, sample preparation, experimental planning and data analysis, and advanced characterisations.
References