Scientists discover clean and green way to recycle Teflon®

New research demonstrates a simple, eco-friendly method to break down Teflon® – one of the world’s most durable plastics – into useful chemical building blocks.

Scientists from Newcastle University and the University of Birmingham have developed a clean and energy-efficient way to recycle Teflon® (PTFE), a material best known for its use in non-stick coatings and other applications that demand high chemical and thermal stability.

The researchers discovered that waste Teflon® can be broken down and repurposed using only sodium metal and mechanical energy – movement by shaking - at room temperature and without toxic solvents.

Publishing their findings today (22 October) in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), researchers reveal a low-energy, waste-free alternative to conventional fluorine recycling.

Dr Roly Armstrong, Lecturer in Chemistry at Newcastle University and corresponding author said: “The process we have discovered breaks the strong carbon–fluorine bonds in Teflon®, converting it into sodium fluoride which is used in fluoride toothpastes and added to drinking water.

“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. 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.”

Associate Professor Dr Erli Lu, from the University of Birmingham, commented: “Fluorine is a vital element in modern life – it’s found in around one-third of all new medicines and in many advanced materials. Yet fluorine is traditionally obtained through energy-intensive and heavily polluting mining and chemical processes. Our method shows that we can recover it from everyday waste and reuse it directly – turning a disposal problem into a resource opportunity.”

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), best known by the brand name Teflon®, is prized for its resistance to heat and chemicals, making it ideal for cookware, electronics, and laboratory equipment, but those same properties make it almost impossible to recycle.

When burned or incinerated, PTFE releases persistent pollutants known as ‘forever chemicals’ (PFAS), which remain in the environment for decades. Traditional disposal methods therefore raise major environmental and health concerns.

The research team tackled this challenge using mechanochemistry – a green approach that drives chemical reactions by applying mechanical energy instead of heat.

Inside a sealed steel container known as a ball mill, sodium metal fragments are ground with Teflon® which causes them to react at room temperature. The process breaks the strong carbon–fluorine bonds in Teflon®, converting it into harmless carbon and sodium fluoride, a stable inorganic salt which is widely used in fluoride toothpastes.

The researchers then showed that the sodium fluoride recovered in this way can also be used directly, without purification, to create other valuable fluorine-containing molecules. These include compounds used in pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, and other fine chemicals.

Associate Professor Dr Dominik Kubicki, who leads the University of Birmingham’s solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) team, commented: “We used advanced solid-state NMR spectroscopy – one of our specialities at Birmingham – to look inside the reaction mixture at the atomic level. This allowed us to prove that the process produces clean sodium fluoride without any by-products. It’s a perfect example of how state-of-the-art materials characterisation can accelerate progress toward sustainability.”

The discovery provides a blueprint for a circular economy for fluorine, in which valuable elements are recovered from industrial waste rather than discarded. This could significantly reduce the environmental footprint of fluorine-based chemicals, which are vital in medicine, electronics, and renewable-energy technologies.

“Our approach is simple, fast, and uses inexpensive materials,” said Dr Lu. “We hope it will inspire further work on reusing other kinds of fluorinated waste and help make the production of vital fluorine-containing compounds more sustainable.”

The work also highlights the growing importance of mechanochemistry – an emerging branch of green chemistry that replaces high-temperature or solvent-intensive reactions with simple mechanical motion – as a tool for sustainable innovation.

Dr Kubicki added: “This research shows how interdisciplinary science, combining materials chemistry with advanced spectroscopy, can turn one of the most persistent plastics into something useful again. It’s a small but important step toward sustainable fluorine chemistry.”

ENDS