Last Update: 06/03/2026 at 9:50 AM EST
Upcycled Nitrile Rubber Carbon Capture
Coverage from American Chemical Society, ScienceBlog.com, and others
Articles
3
Latest Article
03/26
Active Days
27
Executive Summary
Researchers are turning discarded nitrile rubber, including gloves and shoe soles, into amine-rich materials that can capture carbon dioxide at high temperatures, while scale-up, catalyst cost, and stability remain open questions.
Key Points
- A small set of recent studies shows a shared route: hydrogenating nitrile rubber waste into amine-functional materials that bind CO2.
- The strongest experimental signal is high-temperature performance, with adsorption reported around 90 C under flue-gas-like conditions.
- The work is framed as circular materials innovation, using discarded gloves, O-rings, and shoe soles as feedstock rather than virgin polymer.
- Catalyst expense, oxidative stability, and processing of crosslinked or vulcanized waste remain the main barriers to industrial use.
- Results are being compared with established capture materials such as CALF-20 MOF, suggesting the new materials are promising but not yet clearly superior.
- The topic is still early-stage and research-led, with little evidence of deployment beyond laboratory demonstrations.
Featured Article
Researchers at Aarhus University convert nitrile glove waste into CO2 capture material and test uptake at 90 C in laboratory conditions.
Coverage Timeline: 27 Days
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Additional Articles
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Aarhus University researchers convert glove nitrile rubber into carbon capture polyamine membranes in 2026 in Denmark.
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Aarhus University and the University of St Andrews report hydrogenation-based upcycling of nitrile glove and shoe waste into polymers for CO2 adsorption and stretchable materials.