Washington, June 3 (Xinhua) -- Researchers at Washington State University and colleagues have developed a way to turn daily plastic waste into jet fuel, the university said on Wednesday, promising to turn waste into treasure. The research report has been published in the online edition of the British journal Applied Energy.

The researchers milled polyethylene materials such as mineral water bottles, baby bottles and plastic bags into pieces about the size of rice grains and placed these pieces on top of activated carbon. "Baked" in a tubular reactor at temperatures ranging from 430 degrees Celsius to 571 degrees Celsius, the fragments were eventually converted into 85 percent jet fuel and 15 percent diesel fuel.

Plastic has a lot of hydrogen atoms, which are an important component of fuel, the researchers said. But plastic is difficult to degrade, and only by adding a catalyst can its chemical bonds be broken and converted into fuel. Lei Hanwu, an associate professor at Washington State University in the United States, told Xinhua News Agency that 500 kilograms of plastic can be converted into 350 kilograms of fuel, of which 300 kilograms is jet fuel, and can also produce flammable gases such as hydrogen, methane, ethane and propane. The method can collect almost all of the available energy in the plastic, and the energy quality is good, and the process is suitable for large-scale production.

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