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Bulk synthesis of graphene nanosheets from plastic waste: An invincible

method of solid waste management for better tomorrow

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DOI: 10.1016/j.wasman.2019.03.023

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 Waste Management 88 (2019) 48–55

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Waste Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wasman

Bulk synthesis of graphene nanosheets from plastic waste: An invincible

method of solid waste management for better tomorrow
Sandeep Pandey a,1, Manoj Karakoti a,1, Sunil Dhali a, Neha Karki a, Boddepalli SanthiBhushan b,
Chetna Tewari a, Sravendra Rana c, Anurag Srivastava b, Anand B. Melkani a, Nanda Gopal Sahoo a,⇑
a
Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Centre, Department of Chemistry, D.S.B. Campus, Kumaun University, Nainital 263001, Uttarakhand, India
b
Atal Bihari Vajpayee Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior 474015, Madhya Pradesh, India
c
Department of Chemistry, University of Petroleum & Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun 248007, Uttarakhand, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Waste plastic management and converting it into value added products is one of the greatest challenges
Received 28 November 2018 before the scientific community. The present work reports a cost effective, environment friendly and
Revised 7 March 2019 mass production capable method for upcycling of solid plastic waste into value added product (gra-
Accepted 13 March 2019
phene). A two step pyrolysis processes i.e. firstly at 400 °C in presence of nanoclay followed by at
750 °C under nitrogen atmosphere was performed to obtain a black charged residue. Raman spectroscopy
was performed on the obtained residue, where the observed D and G bands at 1342 cm
1 and 1594 cm
1,
Keywords:
respectively, confirm the synthesis of graphene nano sheets. In addition, a broad 2D band at 2790 cm
1
DFT
Graphene
confirm the presence of few layer graphene nano sheets. The obtained graphene nanosheets were also
Plastic waste confirmed through the computational data by Gaussian09, where the peaks at 1379 cm
1 and
Nanoclay 1596 cm
1 for D and G band, respectively, make a good agreement with experimental data. TEM, FT-IR
Raman spectroscopy and EDX spectroscopy were also performed to confirm the synthesis of graphene nanosheets including
the functional group identification and quantitative analysis for elements, respectively.
Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction having enormous branches of application in every field of science

The extensive production and utilization of plastic to improve
the standards of human life is posing disturbing situations for
the ecosystem due to its non-degradable nature. Waste plastic
management and converting it into value added products is one
of the greatest challenges before the scientific community. Thus,
requiring urgent strategies for plastic solid waste management
with the potential to convert the ‘‘Waste to Wealth”. The techno-
logical retardation in the recycling technology seems to be impor-
tant to overcome the problem of solid plastic waste, where the
charismatic application of nanotechnology provides an advantage
over other recycling processes. The rise of carbon nano materials
bolster the technology of solid waste management to get the fruit-
ful value added upcycling process. Especially, the conversion of
selective hazardous solid waste into graphene nano sheets has dri-
ven the key technology.
Graphene, a two dimensional sp2 hybridized single atomic
sheet of graphite has rapidly emerged as a promising candidate
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ngsahoo@yahoo.co.in (N.G. Sahoo).
1
These authors contributed equally to this work.
and technology including energy conversion and storage devices,
fuel cells, biosensors, supercapacitor, drug delivery, polymer
nanocomposites, etc (Choi et al., 2012; Liu et al., 2013; Hu et al.,
2014; Punetha et al., 2017). Several methods such as mechanical
exfoliation of graphite with a scotch tape, chemical vapor deposi-
tion (CVD) on metal surfaces, epitaxial growth on single-crystal
SiC, chemical coupling reactions, or exfoliation of graphite powder
via solution oxidation, sonication/intercalation, etc are currently in
use (Novoselov, 2004; Allen et al., 2010), however, the bulk pro-
duction of graphene nanosheets still reman a challenge.
Solid plastic waste is one of the prominent wastes that can be
used as the precursor for the synthesis of graphene nano sheets.
Thus, the approach to get graphene from solid plastic waste not
only provides a solution to clean up the environmental issues
caused by the solid waste, but also gives an alternative route for
the value added recovery of this plastic waste. Several studies
reported synthesis of high quality carbon nano materials from
plastic waste, where polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE) and
polystyrene (PS) shown their prominent potential to act as precur-
sors to synthesize various forms of CNMs, such as carbon nano
fibers (CNFs), carbon nano tubes (CNTs) and carbon spheres (CSs)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2019.03.023
0956-053X/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 S. Pandey et al. / Waste Management 88 (2019) 48–55
(Wu et al., 2012; Wu et al., 2014; Acomb et al., 2014; Zhuo et al.,
2010, Zhuo et al., 2012; Zhuo and Levendis, 2014). Recently, nan-
oclays have been employed with some solid wastes to get the 2-
dimensional carbon nano materials (Jiang et al., 2007; Gong,
2013; Song et al., 2009). The incorporation of nanoclays in waste
plastic provides an alternative, sophisticated and low cost method
for synthesis of high quality graphene. Recently, one group demon-
strated the effect of organically modified montmorillonite clay
with polypropylene to get high quality graphene nano flakes
(Gong et al., 2014).
Several attempts have been made for recycling of solid plastic
waste, however, failed to achieve an environment friendly and cost
effective upcycling of the waste. Herein, we are reporting the
robust remediation for the conversion of solid plastic waste into
graphene nano sheets in mass production via cost effective method
using nanoclay. We demonstrate the synthesis of graphene
nanosheets from waste plastic, the first step in the process involves
chopping of waste plastic into tiny pieces followed by washing,
drying and mixing with bentonite. Thereafter, the mixture of waste
plastic and bentonite is pyrolysed and followed by heating at high
temperature under nitrogen atmosphere to obtain graphene nano
sheets.
The process is environmental friendly and cost effective in
terms of mass scalability, as the precursor of product found in bulk
within the surrounding and by the aid of local municipality. Sec-
ondly the nanoclay used in the process as a degradation and trans-
forming agent found cheaply and has almost zero toxic effect to
both ecology and economy. In addition to it, the reactor success-
fully removes all the gaseous hydrocarbons by using an inbuilt out-
let pipe within the reactor and finally converted into fuels as a
byproduct. As the present study focused on the value added pro-
duct like graphene nanosheets which have the maximum eco-
nomic values, the process is too viable for keeping the view of
ecology and economy. Beside this, almost zero waste has remained
during the whole process, which is another specialty of the process.
Therefore, the present study motivates towards the process of
‘‘Trash to Treasure” for the wider scope of waste management
technologies.
2. Experimental
2.1. Materials and method
The methodology of producing graphene nano sheets from
waste plastics incurs several steps as summarized in the following
flow chart diagram (Fig. 1). Further, the production of graphene
nano sheets was achieved by following the previously reported
method by our group (Sahoo et al., 2016). Briefly, the synthesis
process of graphene nano sheets was started by collecting the
waste plastics (about 35 kg; categorized PP, PE and PS) from flea
market and local municipality. The collected plastics were chopped
(11.21 mm length, and 5.75 mm width) finely in flake like shape
with the help of shredder. The chopped plastics then washed in a
washing unit with soap solution to remove the oily and greasy
impurities, followed by drying. After performing these elementary
stages of cleaning and drying, the waste plastics and bentonite
nanoclay with disk like particle shape (mean particle diameter of
70 nm, heavy metal was found 0.005% with a pH range of 9.0–
10.5) were mixed thoroughly with the help of sample mixture unit
in a definite ratio. This mixing of substrate with degradation
reagent i.e. bentonite needs to be mixed properly in mixer.
The sample mixture thus prepared has undergone slow pyroly-
sis (horizontal hollow cylindrical feeder unit with the capacity of
0.41 m3 made up of stainless steel) process in inert atmosphere
of N2 gas at 400 °C. This step generates the backbone for the nucle-
49
ation of graphene nanosheets with the separation of all the value
added fuels, waxes and gases. This phase belongs to the slow pyrol-
ysis up to 400 °C with the heating rate of 5 °C/min, which is neces-
sary to remove all the oil containing hydrocarbons from the
plastics. This process involves the slow rate of the pyrolysis to
ensure that all the oil containing hydrocarbons and the gases
ranges from C1-C4 have been removed from the sample mixture.
Further, as the process of the pyrrolysis also contains waxy sub-
stances, the slow rate of the pyrrolysis also reduces the tendencies
of making waxy substances within the sample mixture, therefore
enhances the percentage of the purity level of the graphene
nanosheets during the final step. Once the process of the slow
pyrrolysis has been completed, a black colored amorphous carbon
type charred residue was obtained. Further, a simple ignition test
was also conducted for a number of randomly collected samples
from the bundles of the black residue obtained after the slow
pyrrolysis to ensure that all the oily hydrocarbons and waxy sub-
stances have removed during the slow pyrrolysis. The slow pyrol-
ysis in this temperature causes the nucleation of amorphous,
porous and shinning black charred residue, which was collected
after the cooling of pyrolysis unit at room temperature (Fig. 1a).
The amorphous black charred residue thus collected from the pri-
mary step is placed in the ball mill unit to make the ultra fine pow-
der before undergoing the secondary heating process in inert
atmosphere, to increase the productivity of the graphene nano
sheets in the system. The ultra fine powder thus obtained from
the milling of amorphous carbon residue then undergoes fast heat-
ing process in the secondary reactor (consists a vertical cylindrical
feeder unit with the capacity of 0.06 m3) at 750 °C with the heating
rate of 10 °C/min in inert atmosphere of N2 (20 ml/min), where
black colored graphene nanosheets were obtained (Fig. 1b). The
removal of used nanoclays is necessary to maintain the purity of
the product, which was achieved by washing with distilled water
and mild acidic treatment with 5% HCl. After several experiments,
we have optimized these two temperatures to synthesize the few
layers of graphene successfully.
2.2. Characterizations
Various spectroscopic and advance imaging techniques were
performed to confirm the successful synthesis of graphene nano
sheets. Raman spectroscopy (RIRM-LPI519, excitation beam length
532 nm) was used to demonstrate the vibrational property of gra-
phene nano sheets. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was
performed by using Perkin Elmer, spectrum-2 for the confirmation
of chemical functionality in the graphene nano sheets. X-ray
diffraction (XRD) was performed using a Rigaku Miniflex-II by
using Cu-Ka radiation of wavelength k = 1.5418 Å. TEM studies
were carried out for internal morphology and structure of gra-
phene sheets performed under JEOL, JEM 2100 microscope. Ther-
mogravimetric analysis was performed with TGA 4000, Perkin
Elmer for graphitic nature, purity and percentage of volatile group
present in graphene nano sheets. The Electron dispersive X-ray
spectroscopy (EDX) performed under XMax model number 71299
for the quantitative analysis of elements present in graphene nano
sheets.
Apart from the utilization of advanced characterization tools to
confirm the synthesized material, we have also performed compu-
tational analysis for better understanding and theoretical valida-
tion of experimental results. Density Functional Theory (DFT)
calculations utilizing Gaussian09 and QuantumWise-Atomistix
Toolkit (ATK) packages have been performed for validation of
raman spectra, and understanding of thermodynamic stability,
electronic nature and quantum capacitance of defected graphene
sheets.
50 S. Pandey et al. / Waste Management 88 (2019) 48–55
Fig. 1. The methodology flow chart for the production of graphene nano sheets, (a) physical state of carbon residue obtained from slow pyrolysis, (b) Skeleton structure of
graphene nano sheets after fast heating.
3. Results and discussion
In order to appraise the success of above experimental strategy,
various advanced techniques are used to confirm the synthesis of
graphene nanosheets. Raman spectroscopy has been performed
to confirm the synthesis of graphene and to assess its quality. Var-
ious active modes are observed in the synthesized sample corre-
sponding to the in plane and out of plane CAC bonding (Khan
et al., 2017). Here, we have performed the Raman spectra for the
black charred residue and graphene nano sheet obtained after
the two stage pyrolysis process ate 400 °C and 750 °C respectively.
The spectrum obtain from the graphene nano sheets which shows
two prominent bands, one is D-band at 1342 cm
1 due to stretch-
ing of sp3 carbons, and the other is G band at 1594 cm -1 due to
stretching of sp2 carbons (Fig. 2a) (Kotov et al., 1996; Thomsen
and Reich, 2000). On the hand, these two peaks are also observed
in the black charred residue at D-band and G band at 1343 cm
1
and 1569 cm
1, respectively. The D band shows partially disor-
dered structures of sp2 carbon atom related to the structural
defects, while the G band shows the degree of graphitization asso-
ciated with the first order scattering of sp2 carbon’s E2g vibrational
mode (Chen and Chen, 2015). The low intensity ratio of G band to D
band (IG/ID = 0.90, graphene nano sheet) specify the existence of
anarchic and arbitrarily positioned graphene nanosheets (Sheng
et al., 2011). The D/G band ratio changes in the presence of oxy-
genated groups at upper and lower surfaces as well as edges of
sheet (Choi et al., 2006). Hexagonal structure of graphene nano
sheets shows two main types of edges: Zig-zag and armchair
(Fig. 2d), where only armchair edges are responsible for the elastic
scattering of charge carrier that gives the strong D-peak, however,
this effect is less common for the Zig-zag edges, yet the D-peak
intensity can be witnessed for some samples owing to the non-
uniformity and irregularities in edge structure (Cançado et al.,
2004; You et al., 2008). Besides, a broad 2D band also appears at
2790 cm
1, confirming the presence of few layer graphene nano
sheets (Johra et al., 2014; Tu et al., 2014; Antony et al., 2015; Lou
et al., 2017) but this 2D band is absent in the raman spectra of
black charred residue. This clearly indicates that the black charred
residue at high temperature converts to few layers graphene
nanosheets. Beside these, theoretical and experimental data sup-
ports that the longitudinal optical phonons are active only near
the armchair edges, whereas the transverse optical phonons are
active near to the zigzag edges, so the intensity of G-peak increases
when the polarization of the excitation laser is analogous to arm-
chair and vertical to a zigzag edges (Sasaki et al., 2010; Cong
et al., 2010). The confirmation of synthesized graphene nanosheets
has also been done through computation of Raman data from Den-
sity Functional Theory (DFT) as implemented in Gaussian09 pack-
age (Frisch et al., 2003). The Raman data of graphene nanosheet
having diameter approximately 12 Å has been plotted in Fig. 2b,
where the two prominent peaks at 1379 cm
1 and 1596 cm
1 cor-
respond to characteristic D and G bands, respectively. These peaks
are in good agreement with the experimental result.
To further evaluate the presence the percentage of other func-
tionalities mainly oxygen containing groups and graphitic nature
of synthesized graphene nanosheets, thermogravimetric analysis
(TGA) has been performed (Fig. 2d) in the ambient environment
to confirm the proper skeleton of the graphene nanosheets as the
 S. Pandey et al. / Waste Management 88 (2019) 48–55 51

Fig. 2. (a) Raman spectra of graphene nano sheets (experimental); (b) Raman spectra from computational modeling, (c) Raman spectra of black charred residue (d) TGA curve,
(e) hexagonal structure of graphene nano sheets showing two main types of edges, zig-zag and armchair.

FT-IR spectra reported the presence of several oxygen containing weight loss was 44% of graphene nanosheets took place in two
functional groups within the graphene nanosheets. Here, the total stages i.e. at around the 50 °C to 400 °C and 500 °C to 800 °C. The
52 S. Pandey et al. / Waste Management 88 (2019) 48–55
first stage weight loss around 50 °C to 400 °C was a result of some
moisture and the removal of chemisorbed water molecules in the
graphene nano sheets (Hu et al., 2011; Gong et al., 2014), whereas,
the second stage major weight loss found at range between 500 °C
and 800 °C is due to the removal of oxygen associated functional
groups in the graphene nano sheets (Li et al., 2010).
The XRD spectrum shows three prominent peaks at 2h = 7°, 27°
and 50°, where the broad peak at 7° shows the functionalization of
graphene nanosheets, while the sharp peak at 27° and 50° are the
characteristic peaks of graphene nanosheets (Fig. 3a) (Wang et al.,
2008; Akbar et al., 2015; Das et al., 2018). Fourier transformation
infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) was performed to identify the pres-
ence of functional groups on graphene nanosheets (Fig. 3b). FT-IR
Spectra showed peaks at 1020 cm
1, 1113 cm
1, 1295 cm
1,
1287 cm
1, 1317 cm
1, 1425 cm1, 1510 cm
1, 1575 cm
1, and
1689 cm
1 corresponding to carbon-oxygen, carbon-oxygen-
carbon in epoxy ring, strong OAH deformation & CAO stretching
vibronic interaction, aromatic double bond CAH in plane deforma-
tion vibrations, combination of OAH deformation & CAO stretching
vibration, aromatic carbon- carbon double bond, and strong car-
bonyl stretching, respectively (Majidi and Ghaderi, 2018). The
presence of carbon-oxygen linkage shows a partial oxidation of
the graphene nanosheets during the purification process. The peak
at 1575 cm
1 corresponding to carbon-carbon double bond for aro-
matic C@C bond supports the defined structure of graphene. UV–
Visible spectroscopy was carried out for analysing the absorbance
Fig. 3. (a) XRD spectrum of graphene nano sheets, (b) FT-IR spectrum of graphene nano sheets, (c) UV–vis spectrum of graphene nano sheets, and (d) TEM images of graphene
nano sheets.
behaviour of graphene nano sheets due to the extended aromatic
system. UV–Vis spectrum exhibited a maximum peak at 265 nm
indicating the presence of few layer graphene nanosheets
(Krishnamoorthy et al., 2012; Haghighi and Tabrizi, 2013), which
is further confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (Fig. 3c).
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has been performed to
evaluate the growth and morphology of graphene nanosheets
(Fig. 3d). From TEM images, it has been found that the obtained
graphene nanosheets show wrinkled morphology with arched
boundaries arised from the chemical bonding between carbon lay-
ers, however, at several places the morphology of graphene shows
an arranged array of regular sheets. The results also indicate that
the nucleation density must be controlled to achieve high quality
of graphene nano sheets, which can be obtained via controlled
pyrolysis temperature rate. Studies shown that slow increment of
temperature up to 400 °C provide low injection rate of carbon rad-
icals to achieve a low nucleation density, whereas, after 400 °C, the
slow rate of temperature up to 750 °C causes merging of graphene
nano sheets to form larger cluster type structures.
Further, EDX analysis was performed to recognize the chemical
characterization and quantitative analysis for the occurrence of
oxygen containing groups on the surface as well as the edges of
graphene sheets (Fig. S1, Supporting Information). The obtained
data shows 76.99% and 21.1% of carbon and oxygen, respectively,
in the synthesized graphene nanosheets (Table S1, Supporting
Information), and a good distribution of carbon and oxygen within
 S. Pandey et al. / Waste Management 88 (2019) 48–55 53

the graphene nanosheets (Fig. S2, Supporting Information). Pres-
ence of oxygen in samples reveal the functionalization of graphene
nanosheets, supporting the results obtained via FT-IR and Raman
spectroscopy. TEM images (Fig. 3d) also show some damages/
defects on graphene sheet due to the acid treatment during purifi-
cation process.
Interested in assessment of the defected graphene for energy
storage applications, we performed the DFT calculations to evaluate
the thermodynamic stability, electronic nature and quantum capac-
itance of defected graphene using QuantumWise-Atomistix Toolkit
(ATK) package (http://quantumwise.com/., 2018). ATK is the succes-
sor of TranSIESTA-C code that is based on models, technology and
algorithms as implemented in TranSIESTA (Brandbyge et al., 2002)
and McDCal (Taylor et al., 2001) codes, employing localized basis
sets as developed in SIESTA (Soler et al., 2002). The pristine as well
as defected graphene sheets have been modelled using ‘Virtual
Nanolab‘, a powerful inbuilt graphical interface of ATK. Thereafter,
the graphene sheets are simulated for their total energy and elec-
tronic structures on a HP proliant computing machine loaded with
ATK DFT code. The computations are performed by employing
Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) functional within the Generalized
Gradient Approximation (GGA) as exchange-correlation functional.
The wave functions are expanded through Double-Zeta-Polarized
(DZP) basis sets. The Brillouin zone has been sampled with a
5 * 5 * 1 Monkhorst-Pack grid of k-points, and a high density mesh
cutoff of 130 Hartree utilized for calculation accuracy.
To study the impact of structural vacancies on graphene, the
graphene nano sheet has been subjected to vacancy defects of var-
ious concentrations viz. 1.38%, 4.16%, 6.94% and 9.72% (Fig. 4). All
the defects are realized on a 6 * 6 periodic hexagonal cell of gra-
phene, as depicted in Fig. 4a. The thermodynamic stability of gra-
phene with these structural imperfections has been assessed
with the help of formation energies (ELF) calculated per unit length
of sheet, using Eq. (1) below,

Fig. 4. (a) 6 * 6 periodic hexagonal cell of defected graphene nano sheet, (b) quantum capacitance (CQ) of graphene with structural imperfections (defects) extracted from
their respective electronic density of states (DOS) profiles, (c) The pristine graphene shows perfect zero band gap at the C-point of brillouin zone, and (d-g) all the defect cases
[1.38%, 4.16%, 6.94%, and 9.72%] show metallic nature as observed through Fermi level crossing of energy bands.
54 S. Pandey et al. / Waste Management 88 (2019) 48–55
½Edefect
xEC 
ELF ¼ ð1Þ
L firm the synthesis of graphene nanosheets including the functional
Here, Edefect and EC are the energies of defected graphene nano
sheet and Carbon atom, respectively; x is the number of carbon
atoms in the defected sheet and L is the length of the sheet
(14.7 Å, in our case). The calculated formation energies are listed
in Table S2 (Supporting Information), where low formation energy
refers to high thermodynamic stability. It can be perceived from
Table S2 (Supporting Information) that, the formation energy
increases with the defect concentration implying reducing stabil-
ity. Thus, it is evident that the thermodynamic stability decreases
with increasing defect concentration in the graphene nano sheets.
All the formation energies listed in Table S2 are positive, indicating
the endothermic nature of defect creation, where energy is
absorbed during the process. Though the defected graphenes offer
relatively less stability in comparison to its pristine counterpart,
the defects are actually good for graphene when used for certain
applications such as electrodes of energy storage supercapacitors
and Li-ion batteries. Defects cause drastic enhancement in the
energy density of these devices due to enhanced electrolyte wetta-
bility, electronic nature and quantum capacitance, as illustrated
below.
The electronic nature of graphene with structural imperfections
(defects) is assessed through band structure calculations. As shown
in Fig. 4c, the pristine graphene shows perfect zero band gap at the
C-point of Brillouin zone. The defects have transformed the elec-
tronic nature of graphene from zero band gap to metallic, as seen
from Fig. 4. In all the defect cases Fig. 4d-g, the bands are observed
to cross the Fermi level, which indicates the metallic nature of
these defected sheets. Quantum capacitance (CQ), that plays a sig-
nificant role when graphene is used for energy storage applications
has been calculated over a potential range of
1 to 1 V. Quantum
capacitance is the intrinsic capacitance offered by graphene and
other 2D/1D materials due to their low density of states. In gra-
phene supercapacitors, the total capacitance (CT) is a series combi-
nation of the Quantum capacitance offered by graphene electrode
and double layer capacitance (CDL) offered by the helmholtz layers,
i.e (C1T ¼ C1Q þ C1DL ). Thus, graphene electrodes with higher quantum
capacitance are required to achieve high total capacitance, and
thereby high energy density (since, E ¼ 12 C T V2 ).
The quantum capacitance (CQ) of defected graphenes is calcu-
lated from their respective electronic density of states (DOS) pro-
files with the help of MATLAB programming considering the
fixed band approximation. The variation in excess charge density
(Q) of a material for an applied bias potential (u) is called the
Quantum Capacitance, and is represented as C Q ¼ ddQu (Zhan et al.,
2016). The methodology used to extract the quantum capacitance
has been described in the supporting information. The quantum
capacitance of graphene with various defect concentrations is plot-
ted in Fig. 4b. It is worth noting that, the defects have resulted in
dramatic enhancement of graphene’s quantum capacitance. The
peak CQ measured for pristine graphene is 18.85 lF/cm2 at
1 V.
While the peak CQ for defect concentrations 1.38%, 4.16%, 6.94%,
and 9.72% are 214.16 lF/cm2 at
0.11 V, 209.37 lF/cm2 at 0.03 V,
203.7 lF/cm2 at 0.02 V, and 101.1 lF/cm2 at 0.22 V, respectively.
All the defect concentrations have shown higher quantum capaci-
tance than pristine graphene over the entire applied potential
range. Thus, the defected graphene can be an excellent choice for
energy applications.
4. Conclusion
We report a green, robust and cost effective method for the
mass production of graphene nanosheets from solid plastic waste.
Raman, TEM, FT-IR and EDX spectroscopy were performed to con-
group identification and quantitative analysis for elements. This
method is highly efficient and converted a 35 kg of solid plastic
waste into 5.25 kg of pure graphene nanosheets in a single batch.
The synthesized graphene nanosheets have also been confirmed
by the raman spectra extracted from computational methods. Fur-
ther, the defected graphene has been analyzed by computational
study for thermodynamic stability, quantum capacitance and elec-
tronic properties and predicted its excellent suitability for energy
storage applications. Moreover, our synthesized graphene may be
used for various other applications such as solar cells, fuel cells,
drug delivery, polymer nanocomposites, etc.
Acknowledgements
The work is supported by the National Mission of Himalayan
Studies, Kosi Kataramal, Almora, India (Ref. No.: NMHS/MG-
2016/002/8503-7) and Department of Science and Technology,
INSPIRE division (Ref No. IF150750), New Delhi, India.
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2019.03.023.
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