Scientists at two UK universities have created a low-energy and waste-free method to recycle Teflon – the synthetic polymer best known for its resilience and non-reactive qualities.
The team at Newcastle University and the University of Birmingham were able to break down Teflon (Polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE) using a surprisingly simple method involving shaking it together with sodium metal in a small steel container.
Grinding the materials together breaks the carbon-fluorine bonds in Teflon to produce clean waste products: sodium fluoride – a useful, stable salt widely used in products like toothpaste – and harmless carbon.
The approach is also relatively low-energy as using mechanical movement to drive this reaction means that it can be created at room temperature rather than at high temperatures.
The team believes that their method can help to reduce the environmental impact of other products containing fluorine that are currently discarded rather than recycled.
“Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of Teflon are produced globally each year — it’s used in everything from lubricants to coatings on cookware, and currently there are very few ways to get rid of it,” explained Dr. Roly Armstrong, Lecturer in Chemistry at Newcastle University.
“As those products come to the end of their lives they currently end up in landfill – but this process allows us to extract the fluorine and upcycle it into useful new materials.”
“Fluorine is a vital element in modern life – it’s found in around one-third of all new medicines and in many advanced materials,” says Dr Erli. Lu, Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham.
“Yet fluorine is traditionally obtained through energy-intensive and heavily polluting mining and chemical processes. Our method shows that we can recover it from everyday waste and reuse it directly – turning a disposal problem into a resource opportunity.”
The team’s results were published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
