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  • Review Article
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Solar-driven reforming of solid waste for a sustainable future

Nature Sustainability volume 4, pages 383–391 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Approximately 70% of global municipal solid waste is lost to landfills or the environment each year, an emblem of our increasingly unsustainable economic system in which materials and energy are produced, used and promptly discarded. Photoreforming is a sunlight-driven technology that can help disrupt this linear model by simultaneously reclaiming the value in waste and contributing to renewable hydrogen production. This Review examines the advantages and challenges of photoreforming of real waste streams. By reviewing literature on photoreforming and conducting basic techno-economic and life cycle assessments, we identify key pathways for enhancing the impact of photoreforming for a carbon-neutral future.

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Fig. 1: Diagram of the waste photoreforming process.
Fig. 2: Analysis of global waste streams and their applicability to photoreforming.
Fig. 3: Feasibility of pilot-scale photoreforming.
Fig. 4: Recommended future research areas for waste photoreforming.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Cambridge Creative Circular Plastics Centre (CirPlas, EP/S025308/1), EPSRC (NanoDTC, EP/L015978/1 and EP/S022953), the Austrian Science Fund (Schrödinger Scholarship J-4381), the Erasmus Programme by the European Commission, and the OMV Group. We thank Q. Wang, T. Li and i-Teams (A. Sneyd, A. Weatherup, B. Gutstein, C. Holloway, D. Elio D’Orazio, D. Caddick, E. Soto-Ruiz, J. Teo, J. Carey, J. Qiu, L. Allen, M. Santihayu Sukma, M. Priest, S. Admad, T. Najmatul Huq and Z. Hao) for useful discussions.

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  1. Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Taylor Uekert, Christian M. Pichler, Teresa Schubert & Erwin Reisner

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Contributions

T.U. and E.R. designed the review, T.U. and T.S. performed the feasibility analysis, C.M.P. prepared the alternative technologies tables and discussion and T.U. developed all other figures and tables. All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript and approved the final version.

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Correspondence to Erwin Reisner.

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Competing interests

A patent application on photoreforming with carbonaceous photocatalysts has been filed by Cambridge Enterprise (WO 2019/229255) and lists E.R. as an inventor. The other authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Sustainability thanks Feng Wang, Jeffrey Chi-Sheng Wu and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Fig. 1, Tables 1–14, Methods, Discussion and references.

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Uekert, T., Pichler, C.M., Schubert, T. et al. Solar-driven reforming of solid waste for a sustainable future. Nat Sustain 4, 383–391 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-00650-x

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