Upgrading Mixed Textile Waste to Nano Onion-Like Fullerenes by the Two-Step Flash Joule Heating

Real-world mixed textile waste streams seriously hinder recycling. Herein, we present a two-step flash Joule heating (FJH) strategy for directly upgrading mixed textile waste into ordered multilayer nano onion-like fullerenes (NOLFs). The interaction between different fibers, termed a "scaffolding effect" involving physical confinement and chemical bonding, was strengthened by the precarbonization (280 °C) treatment. Consequently, the polyester/cotton mixture can be upgraded to NOLFs within 5 s with high quality (I2D/IG = 1.47) and yield (41.6%) at 2000 °C, and this technology can be successfully extended to other textiles and solid wastes (polyamide, straws, etc.). The evolution pathway of carbon atoms leading to the formation of the core pentagonal/hexagonal ring structure in NOLFs was systematically investigated in this work. Moreover, an automated FJH prototype was developed to produce NOLFs with 86.4 g·day-1 continuously, and these NOLFs derived an excellent performance as electrode and lubricant.