Smoking is good... for China's infrastructure
Now instead of littering Chinese streets, these cigarette butts can be put to good use.The newest recyclable material in China? Cigarette butts.
The Shanghai government might want to question the newly proposed smoking ban, as Chinese scientists announce that they’ve found a new use for the countless cigarette butts that litter local streets every day, leaching into the local environment: use them to protect steel piping, a key part of the Middle Kingdom's ever-increasing infrastructure.
The recently released Chinese study, reported in the China Post, shows that remnants of used cigarettes butts, one of the world’s most common kinds of trash, “soaked in water can help guard against corrosion in a type of steel commonly used in the oil industry.”
"When people walk on the streets, they usually see cigarette butts scattered everywhere, on the ground or the grass," says Jun Zhao, a PhD student at the Xi'an Jiaotong University who worked on the study, by telephone to the site. "I felt it was quite significant to do a project related to environmental protection."
In a country with 30 percent of the world’s smokers as well as world's largest tobacco grower and cigarette producer, this is very, very, good news.
The study, published in “Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research,” explains the finding: “The scientists showed that extracts of cigarette butts in water, applied to a type of steel (N80) widely used in the oil industry, protected the steel from rusting even under the harsh conditions, preventing costly damage and interruptions in oil production. They identified nine chemicals in the extracts, including nicotine, which appear to be responsible for this anti-corrosion effect.”
We're sure smokers around China are now puffing away a bit easier knowing their doing their part to help Chinese growth.
