Recycling Zn Casing Waste into a ZnO–Cu-Based Electrocatalyst for Selective CO2 Electroreduction to Ethylene
Pitchapa Pittayavinai, Teerapat Inudom, Jitti Kasemchainan, Sirilux Poompradub · 2026
Read Recycling Zn Casing Waste into a ZnO–Cu-Based Electrocatalyst for Selective CO2 Electroreduction to Ethylene by Pitchapa Pittayavinai, Teerapat Inudom, Jitti Kasemchainan, Sirilux Poompradub (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13280847.txt.
Description
Pitchapa Pittayavinai and colleagues published a 2026 study converting zinc battery casings into a catalyst that turns carbon dioxide into ethylene, a chemical feedstock. Spent zinc-carbon batteries are a poorly recycled waste stream. The team oxidized recovered casings into zinc oxide nanorods and decorated them with copper oxide particles. They then ran carbon dioxide electrolysis across a range of voltages.
The catalyst produced ethylene at one voltage setting, with a Faradaic efficiency of 5.62 percent, meaning that share of the charge ended up in ethylene. Minor methane, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen formed alongside. After reuse, the catalyst still made the simpler gases but no ethylene. Images showed the copper particles had clumped and detached, killing the active sites. The efficiency is modest, and the authors present the work as a proof of route: battery waste can become a catalyst. Keeping its structure intact through reuse is the next problem.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Pitchapa Pittayavinai, Teerapat Inudom, Jitti Kasemchainan, Sirilux Poompradub |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 30 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |