Bulk synthesis of graphene nanosheets from plastic waste: An invincible method of solid waste management for better tomorrow

Abstract Waste plastic management and converting it into value added products is one of the greatest challenges before the scientific community. The present work reports a cost effective, environment friendly and mass production capable method for upcycling of solid plastic waste into value added product (graphene). 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 , respectively, confirm the synthesis of graphene nano sheets. In addition, a broad 2D band at 2790 cm −1 confirm the presence of few layer graphene nano sheets. The obtained graphene nanosheets were also confirmed through the computational data by Gaussian09, where the peaks at 1379 cm −1 and 1596 cm −1 for D and G band, respectively, make a good agreement with experimental data. TEM, FT-IR and EDX spectroscopy were also performed to confirm the synthesis of graphene nanosheets including the functional group identification and quantitative analysis for elements, respectively.