Trillions Of Toxic Cigarette Butts Contain High Performance “Super Carbon” Needed In Advanced Electronics

I was recently in my cellar and stepped out into the courtyard behind my building in the North End of Boston onto a pile of what must have been hundreds of cigarette butts, maybe a thousand.

These cigarette butts covered the ground like grass covers a field and I was immediately nauseated and a bit unhappy with my neighbor or neighbors who I imagined throwing butt after butt to the ground, night after night.

It could be the lady from on the 6th floor or the young buck from the third floor. All I know is the people who littered the area will never clean it up and the fact that I’m moving soon means the mess will be left for some other poor soul to deal with.

There May Be Money In Discarded Cigarette Butts

Perhaps the greatest payback would be to one day see that a cigarette butt is worth serious money and to watch all the smokers who littered streets, roads and highways cringe as they realize how much money they have really lost.

In fact, researchers at South Korea’s Seoul Daschle University recently published findings in the IOP Journal of Nanotechnology showing that cigarette butts actually contain a high performance “super carbon” material that is superior in some respects to commercially manufactured carbon graphite and carbon nanotubes, and can be used in devices with storage technology such as smart phones, tablets, and anything else that runs on a battery.

According to study leader Professor Jongheop Yi, “used cigarette filters can be transformed into high-performing carbon base material using a simple one step process, which simultaneously offers a green solution to meeting the energy demands of society.”

With an ever expanding need for supercapacitors with high energy and power density and a stable cycle, this new technology has promise. The cellulose acetate fibers of cigarette filters are transformed through a burning technique called pyrolysis, thereby increasing the number of tiny pores and improving the performance of the supercapacitive material.

It is not yet clear if the price for used cigarette butts has gone up. If it has, I might have to go clean the courtyard behind my building after all. If this is the case, the South Korean researchers deserve a Noble Prize!

Tags: cigarettes

This entry was posted on September 2nd, 2014 and is filed under Technology. Both comments and pings are currently closed.