IIT Mandi researchers produce new photocatalysts to convert plastics to hydrogen

The generation of hydrogen from plastics is particularly useful because gas is considered the most practical non-polluting fuel of the future.

IIT Mandi researchers produce new photocatalysts to convert plastics to hydrogen

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi researchers have come up with a method that can transform plastic into hydrogen when exposed to light. The generation of hydrogen from plastics is particularly useful because gas is considered the most practical non-polluting fuel of the future.

Plastics, most of which are derived from petroleum, are not bio-degradable, i.e., they cannot be easily broken down into harmless products. It is said that most of the 4.9 billion tonnes of plastics ever produced would end up in landfills, threatening human health and the environment. Fuelled by the need to prevent runaway plastic pollution, IIT Mandi researchers are developing methods that can transform plastic into useful chemicals.

This study was funded by the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC), Ministry of Education. The findings from this work have been recently published in the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering. The research was led by Dr. Prem Fexil Siril, Professor, School of Basic Sciences, IIT Mandi, and Dr. Aditi Halder, Associate Professor, School of Basic Sciences, IIT Mandi, and co-authored by their Ph.D. scholars, Rituporn Gogoi, Astha Singh,  Vedasree Moutam, Lalita Sharma, Kajal Sharma.

Dr Prem Fexil Siril, Professor, School of Basic Sciences, IIT Mandi, said, “The ideal path to effective annihilation of plastics is to degrade them into useful chemicals. The generation of hydrogen from plastics is particularly useful because the gas is considered the most practical non-polluting fuel of the future.”

Researchers have developed a catalyst that can efficiently convert plastics into hydrogen and other useful chemicals when exposed to light. Catalysts are substances that drive otherwise difficult or impossible reactions and when they are activated by light, they are called photocatalysts.  The IIT Mandi photocatalyst combines iron oxide in the form of nanoparticles (particles a hundred thousand times smaller than the diameter of a single hair strand), with a conducting polymer -polypyrrole.

The researchers found that combining iron oxide nanoparticles with pyrrole resulted in the formation of a semiconductor-semiconductor heterojunction, which in turn results in strong visible-light-induced photocatalytic activity. Photocatalysts usually need UV light for activation and therefore require special bulbs. The IIT Mandi catalyst can function simply with sunlight.

Explaining his research, Dr. Prem Felix Siril., said, “We first ascertained the photocatalytic activity of our catalyst by seeing its action on methyl orange, whose colour change from orange to colourless showed the extent to which our catalyst was able to degrade it.”

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