Newsweek publishes article on Teague’s research

Newsweek published a story on June 21, titled “How waste from soft drink production could be used to tackle global warming.”

A Cornell College team of researchers, including lead author of the study Professor of Chemistry Craig Teague, worked with other experts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee on the idea starting in 2016, and their final conclusions were published in the journal article  “Microporous and hollow carbon spheres derived from soft drinks: Promising CO2 separation materials”  in April of 2019. Their new research shows that the by-products of some soft drinks actually remove carbon dioxide, a gas known to warm the planet, from gas streams.

According to the team’s research, soft drink production generates high-volume waste streams, both in the form of expired drinks and waste from the production process. The group selected four different soft drinks at random: Coca-Cola, Push Orange, Diet Mountain Dew, and Diet Pepsi. In the lab, they reduced the soft drinks to carbon powder using a simple hydrothermal synthesis process. The remaining carbon powder has micropores or tiny spaces that capture the carbon dioxide.