Scientists discover annoying foam packing peanuts can now be used for something other than trash

Foam peanuts that constantly clutter your room and fill up the trash, after a package arrives, could actually be useful. This new discovery, presented at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), was researched by a team from the Purdue University. They developed a process that turns this trash into parts of rechargeable batteries.

MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - This could outperform what we are currently using for rechargeable batteries. The researchers hope this process, using foam peanuts, will be available commercially within two years.

According to one of the researchers involved, Vinodkumar Etacheri, Ph.D., the small foam packing material is not safe to dispose; they could take up large amounts of space in landfills and pose more damage to the environment because of their chemical composition.

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They are not suitable for recycling, due to the higher cost needed to just transport them to recycling facilities, according to Etacheri.

Vilas Pol, Ph.D., from Purdue University, explains the idea of transforming the porous foam into something useful and "green" came as he was taking a delivery of new laboratory equipment.

Not throwing the packing peanuts away, Etacheri and Pol developed a process where they were able to turn the particles of foam into "high-tech carbon microsheets and nanoparticles for use in rechargeable batteries." The duo reported they performed better than the commercial anodes available in the market. What they had discovered was better at storing energy because of the structure.

"They both have disordered, porous structures. Their disordered crystal structure lets them store more lithium ions than the theoretical limit, and their porous microstructure lets the lithium ions quickly diffuse into the microsheets and creates more surface area for electrochemical interactions," Etacheri explained.

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