Researchers have found a way to turn Teflon into useful fluoride products, potentially opening up a way to recycle a durable plastic into something friendlier to the environment and to human health.
A group of scientists at Newcastle University and the University of Birmingham demonstrated an energy-efficient process that subjects polytetrafluoroethylene, known as Teflon, to a shaking process using sodium metal at room temperature, avoiding the need for relatively costly high-temperature processes.
The method breaks the carbon-fluorine bonds in Teflon and results in sodium fluoride, which can be used as a safe additive in toothpaste and drinking water to improve dental health.
The process presents a new way to recycle polytetrafluoroethylene, which is used in cookware and lubrication because it is resistant to heat and chemical reactions. Those same properties can make it a stubborn environmental contaminant when products reach the end of their lives and are sent to landfills.
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"Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of Teflon are produced globally each year — it’s used in everything from lubricants to coatings on cookware, and currently there are very few ways to get rid of it," corresponding author Dr. Roly Armstrong said in a press release. "As those products come to the end of their lives they currently end up in landfill — but this process allows us to extract the fluorine and upcycle it into useful new materials."
Researchers say the fluorine recovered in the new process could be used in toothpaste, or could be adapted for pharmaceuticals or other chemical manufacturing.
The new findings are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
