Cigarette butts can be converted into electrical parts

Globally, we’re throwing out around 5.6 trillion cigarette butts every year, and they’re both toxic and non-biodegradable. But what if we could convert all of this waste into something useful?

A team of researchers from the Seoul National University has discovered that cigarette butt material - cellulose acetate fibre - can be made into a coating needed to produce a device known as a supercapacitor. Supercapacitors are powerful components used in many different kinds of electronics to store large amounts of electrical energy. They’re used for backing up batteries in computers and smartphones, and for storing renewable energy in electric cars and wind turbines. Needless to say, we're going to need to produce a lot of supercapacitors in the foreseeable future, so why not tap into the 766,571 metric tonnes of cigarette butts that are disposed of globally every year?

"Numerous countries are developing strict regulations to avoid the trillions of toxic and non-biodegradable used-cigarette filters that are disposed of into the environment each year,” said the study's co-author, physicist Jongheop Yi, in a press release. “Our method is just one way of achieving this."

The team converts the fibres in the cigarette butts into a useable substance through a special burning technique known as pyrolysis. Pyrolysis punches a series of tiny pores into the fibre, which gives it the large surface area it needs to increase the performance of the supercapacitor. "A combination of different pore sizes ensures that the material has high power densities, which is an essential property in a supercapacitor for the fast charging and discharging,” the researchers said.

Publishing in the journal Nanotechnology, the team reports that their new cigarette butt material can store a higher amount of electrical energy than the carbon-based material that's currently being used by supercapacitor manufacturers to do the job.