{"id":175987,"date":"2026-04-23T07:37:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T05:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=175987"},"modified":"2026-04-17T13:48:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T11:48:32","slug":"researchers-turn-recovered-car-battery-acid-and-plastic-waste-into-clean-hydrogen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/researchers-turn-recovered-car-battery-acid-and-plastic-waste-into-clean-hydrogen\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers turn recovered car battery acid and plastic waste into clean hydrogen\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\"Erwin
Erwin Reisner and Kay Kwarteng \u00a9 Beverly Low<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Researchers have developed a solar-powered reactor to break down hard-to-recycle forms of plastic waste \u2013 such as drinks bottles, nylon textiles and polyurethane foams \u2013 using acid recovered from old car batteries, and converting it into clean hydrogen fuel and valuable industrial chemicals.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reactor, developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, is powered by the energy from the sun, and could be a cheaper, more sustainable alternative to current chemical-based recycling methods. The team say their method could create a circular system where one waste stream solves another. Their results are reported in the journal Joule<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Global plastic production exceeds 400 million tonnes per year, yet only 18% is recycled. The rest is burned, landfilled, or leaks into ecosystems. The researchers say that their method, known as solar\u2011powered acid photoreforming, could help address the global mountain of plastic waste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers engineered a photocatalyst that is robust enough to withstand the highly corrosive effects of acid, while making productive use of the acid inside spent car batteries, which is normally neutralised and discarded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe discovery was almost accidental,\u201d said Professor Erwin Reisner<\/strong> from Cambridge\u2019s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, who led the research. \u201cWe used to think acid was completely off limits in these solar-powered systems, because it would simply dissolve everything. But our catalyst developed didn\u2019t \u2013 and suddenly a whole new world of reactions opened up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAcids have long been used to break plastics apart, but we never had a cheap and scalable photocatalyst that could withstand them,\u201d said lead author Kay Kwarteng<\/strong>, a PhD candidate in Reisner\u2019s research group, who developed the photocatalyst. \u201cOnce we solved that problem, the advantages of this type of system became obvious.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The method developed by Kwarteng, Reisner and their colleagues first treats waste plastics with the car battery waste acid, breaking the long polymer chains into chemical building blocks such as ethylene glycol, which the photocatalyst then converts into hydrogen and acetic acid (the main ingredient in vinegar) when exposed to sunlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In laboratory tests, the reactor generated high hydrogen yields and produced acetic acid with high selectivity. It also ran for more than 260 hours without any loss in performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The approach works for multiple types of plastic waste, even those that are currently tough to recycle, such as nylon and polyurethane. This offers a real advancement to current upcycling technologies that do not cover plastics beyond PET.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The approach works not just with new, laboratory-grade acid, but with the acid recovered from car batteries. These batteries contain between 20-40% acid by volume, and are replaced worldwide in huge numbers every year. The lead in these batteries is typically extracted for resale, but the acid creates extra waste once it is safely neutralised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s an untapped resource,\u201d said Kwarteng<\/strong>. \u201cIf we can collect the acid before it\u2019s neutralised, we can use it again and again to break down plastics: it\u2019s a real win-win, avoiding the environmental cost of neutralising the acid, while putting it to work generating clean hydrogen.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The researchers say their method offers a potential order\u2011of\u2011magnitude cost reduction compared with other photoreforming approaches, largely because the acid enables increased hydrogen production rates and can be reused rather than consumed or wasted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kwarteng<\/strong> says that although challenges remain \u2013 such as ensuring reactors can withstand corrosive conditions \u2013 the fundamental chemistry is sound. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThese acids are already handled safely in industry,\u201d he<\/strong> said. \u201cThe question now is engineering: how do we build reactors that can run continuously and handle real\u2011world waste?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The researchers say that their approach won\u2019t replace conventional recycling, but it could complement it by handling contaminated or mixed plastics that currently have no viable route to reuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re not promising to fix the global plastics problem,\u201d said Reisner. \u201cBut this shows how waste can become a resource. The fact we can create value from plastic waste using sunlight and discarded battery acid makes this a really promising process.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The team plans to commercialise this process with the support of Cambridge Enterprise, the University\u2019s innovation arm, and with a UKRI Impact Acceleration Account. The research was supported in part by the Cambridge Trust, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Leverhulme Trust, the Isaac Newton Trust, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Erwin Reisner is a Fellow of St John\u2019s College, Cambridge. Kay Kwarteng is a Member of Churchill College, Cambridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Reference<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Papa K. Kwarteng et al. \u2018Solar Reforming of Plastics using Acid-catalyzed Depolymerization<\/a>.\u2019 Joule (2026)<\/em>. DOI: 10.1016\/j.joule.2026.102347<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers have developed a solar-powered reactor to break down hard-to-recycle forms of plastic waste \u2013 such as drinks bottles, nylon textiles and polyurethane foams \u2013 using acid recovered from old car batteries, and converting it into clean hydrogen fuel and valuable industrial chemicals. The reactor, developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, is powered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":176016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Solar\u2011powered acid photoreforming, could help address the global mountain of plastic waste as it could be a cheaper, more sustainable alternative to current chemical-based recycling methods","footnotes":""},"categories":[17143],"tags":[17202,10416,15511,12961,27848,14462,10453,15515],"supplier":[22783,5159,25979,16059],"class_list":["post-175987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recycling","tag-chemicalrecycling","tag-circulareconomy","tag-greenhydrogen","tag-photocatalysis","tag-photoreforming","tag-plasticwaste","tag-recycling","tag-upcycling","supplier-cambridge-university","supplier-engineering-and-physical-sciences-research-council-epsrc","supplier-royal-academy-of-engineering","supplier-uk-research-and-innovation-ukri"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175987"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176030,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175987\/revisions\/176030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175987"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=175987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}