How Packing Peanuts May Become Reusable Energy

How Packing Peanuts May Become Reusable Energy

Written by Nick
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Published on July 27, 2015
Packing peanuts feature

It happens every day: you order something online, it shows up at your door, and there inside the box lies hundreds of packing peanuts. And not the cool cornstarch kind that dissolve in water, but the evil polystyrene ones that will never biodegrade. Unless you are shipping something back out, they’re useless.

But now, packing peanuts may actually be redeeming themselves by transforming into reusable energy.

Fifty years after their invention, some resourceful chemical engineers at Purdue University have found a way to get those foam bits to pull double duty.

Packing peanuts feature
Photo from allstars/Shutter Stock

It started off simply enough. Vilas Pol, an associate professor at Purdue’s School of Chemical Engineering and lead author of the study took notice of the amount of equipment and chemicals the lab received each week, all of it surrounded by (you guessed it) packing peanuts. The waste began to trouble him and he wanted to find a way to reuse or repurpose them that would benefit the environment.

By examining the chemical makeup of the packing material, it was found that the primary components of packing peanuts are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. That was when Pol and the team hit on the idea of using the carbon to create an anode for rechargable lithium ion batteries. Isolating the carbon with heat, they were able to form thin sheets of carbon that could then be used as a battery anode.

Their new battery performed better than comparable lithium ion batteries, storing a 15 percent higher charge and charging more quickly. Plus, the energy required for the carbon extraction process is far less than the conventional processes used to produce carbon anodes. The team is exploring other uses for the carbon they extract as well.

Every year, billions of packing peanuts end up in landfills. It is estimated that only 10 percent of them are actually reused or recycled. Since they don’t decompose, this is bad news for the environment. With this new process, the Purdue team expects that within five years they could increase the amount of recycled peanuts up to fifty percent. Soon, when you get that new electronic gadget, the packaging it comes in could even be used to recharge it.

Featured Image from allstars/Shutter Stock

Nick

Nick