Catalytic recycling of medical plastic wastes over La0.6Ca0.4Co1–xFexO3−δ pre-catalysts for co-production of H2 and high-value added carbon nanomaterials

In this work, waste medical masks collected from daily life usage were pyrolyzed and catalytically decomposed with perovskite-type La0.6Ca0.4Co1–xFexO3−δ pre-catalysts for co-production of carbon nanomaterials and H2. The influences of catalysis reaction temperature and Co/Fe ratio in the investigated pre-catalysts on the yields and selectivity of the gaseous products and carbon deposition were systematically studied. The physicochemical characteristics of the produced carbon nanomaterials were comprehensively characterized by the state-of-the-art techniques. La0.6Ca0.4Co0.2Fe0.8O3–δ possessed the highest hydrogen and carbon nanomaterials yields at 850 °C among all the investigated pre-catalysts. Especially, this pre-catalyst showed an excellent performance during the 10 cycles of successive deconstruction of plastic wastes with the highest hydrogen yield of 34.33 mmol / gplastic at the 7th cycle. More importantly, carbon nanotubes generated had higher graphitic characteristics and fewer defects. The presented results demonstrated that the developed perovskite-type pre-catalyst is a promising candidate for the production of hydrogen and carbon nanotube composites for energy storge applications from medical waste plastics.