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Ning Cai, Siqian Jia, Kunpeng Sun, Jiahui Zhu, Chuanwen Zhao, Haiping Yang. High-Value Utilization of Waste Plastics: Transforming Plastic Polymers into Thin-Walled and Uniform Carbon Nanotubes via Catalytic Pyrolysis. Green Energy&Environment. doi: 10.1016/j.gee.2025.10.004
Citation: Ning Cai, Siqian Jia, Kunpeng Sun, Jiahui Zhu, Chuanwen Zhao, Haiping Yang. High-Value Utilization of Waste Plastics: Transforming Plastic Polymers into Thin-Walled and Uniform Carbon Nanotubes via Catalytic Pyrolysis. Green Energy&Environment. doi: 10.1016/j.gee.2025.10.004
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High-Value Utilization of Waste Plastics: Transforming Plastic Polymers into Thin-Walled and Uniform Carbon Nanotubes via Catalytic Pyrolysis

doi: 10.1016/j.gee.2025.10.004

  • 1. School of Energy and Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, PR China;

  • 2. State Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China

Funds:

The authors wish to express their sincere thanks for financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52506213) and the National Key R&

D Program of China (Grant No. 2024YFF0508900). This study was partially funded by the Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China Program (Grant No. 24KJB480009). The authors would like to thank SCI-GO (www.sai-go.com) and ZHONG KE BAI CE (http://www.zkbaice.com/) for the SEM and TEM characterization as well.

  • Received date 25 May 2025, Accepted date 08 October 2025, RevRecd date 15 August 2025, Available online 13 October 2025
    Abstract
  • The high-value utilization of waste plastics plays a crucial role in mitigating plastic pollution. In this work, transition metals were selected as active species, while magnesium oxide, derived from the calcination of basic magnesium carbonate, served as the support material for the generation of thin-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The confined pore structure restricts the migration of reduced iron nanoparticles, promoting the nucleation and growth of small-diameter and thin-walled CNTs. The results show that over 10 wt.% carbon deposits were collected from various types of plastics. The CNTs generated from polyethylene exhibit a diameter of approximately 8 nm and a wall thickness of about 6 layers of graphite. Additionally, Ni-based and Co-based catalysts, polypropylene and polystyrene have also been studied and around 10 nm CNTs were produced. Moreover, this study further demonstrates that excessively high or low temperatures are detrimental to the growth of CNTs. To sum up, this work proposes a novel strategy for recycling waste plastics into smaller-diameters CNTs, offering significant potential for the high-value utilization of waste.

     

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