Disposable nitrile rubber gloves are produced in massive quantities each year, with most used only once before being discarded. The result is a rapidly growing waste stream that is often burned or buried.

A new study suggests the material could have an entirely different future. Researchers at Aarhus University have demonstrated a method for transforming waste rubber gloves into a solid adsorbent capable of repeatedly capturing carbon dioxide.

The concept aims to repurpose a difficult waste product as a tool for emissions reduction. Simon Kildahl, a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University, and his colleagues report that nitrile rubber can be chemically converted into a CO₂‑capture material. He notes that the approach could have significant impact because so much of the material currently ends up being incinerated.

“A plastic bottle can be recycled relatively easily, as we know from deposit-return systems,” Kildahl said. “But other plastic materials are problematic because they cannot be reused in the same way. Therefore, they often end up being burned, which is currently the case for rubber gloves.”
“In our experiments, we converted the glove so that it could capture CO₂ instead of becoming a waste product that releases CO₂ and other harmful gases during incineration.”

Kildahl works within the Skydstrup Group under the Novo Nordisk Foundation CO₂ Research Center (CORC), a collaboration focused on technologies that capture or convert carbon dioxide. The team has previously explored ways to recover value from other hard‑to‑recycle materials, including polyurethane foam from mattresses and components from wind turbine blades.

Nitrile rubber gloves pose a similar challenge, as they are essential in healthcare, widely used, and typically discarded after one use. The new method seeks to address both the waste problem and industrial emissions.

The process begins by shredding the gloves into small pieces. The material is then reacted with a ruthenium‑based catalyst and hydrogen gas, altering its chemical structure so it can adsorb CO₂ from simulated flue gas. According to the researchers, a real‑world application could take place at power plants.

After capturing CO₂, the material can be heated to release the gas for underground storage or use in Power‑to‑X processes. The heating step regenerates the glove‑based material, allowing it to capture new CO₂ in multiple cycles.

While CO₂‑capture technologies exist, many rely on newly manufactured materials that require fossil‑based feedstocks. Kildahl’s team highlights that using a waste product avoids adding new fossil inputs to the system.

“That is why it is smart to utilize a waste material available in such large quantities, rather than extracting more oil from the ground,” Kildahl said. “With the rubber glove, we can create a CO₂ capture material where almost every atom in the product comes from waste, except for a small amount of hydrogen.”

The work remains in early stages. The team reports its progress as Technology Readiness Level three or four, operating at a gram scale in the lab. Scaling to kilogram‑level production will require solving challenges involving heat transfer, mixing, and cost.

Cost is another obstacle, as the method currently relies on an expensive catalyst. Any commercial pathway would require a cheaper catalyst, improved recycling, or a redesigned process that uses far less.

Even so, the researchers say they have demonstrated that the method works in principle and are exploring ways to make the material more robust, affordable, and competitive with existing CO₂‑capture technologies. They believe that with improvements in scalability and cost, the approach could advance to later development stages.

The study is published in the journal CHEM.

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Researchers turn disposable rubber gloves into reusable CO2 capture material

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