Creating LEDs from food waste

There’s no doubt, given total cost of ownership, that long-lasting LEDs are cheaper than predecessor technology. What if we can take the outrageously huge tonnage of food and beverage waste to create LEDs? Say what? Yes, really. Researchers at the University of Utah are doing just that. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that approximately 31% of food produced in 2014 was not available for human consumption. A research team at the University of Utah synthesized food, beverage, and combustion wastes to produce fluorescent semiconductor nanoparticles or quantum dots as luminescent carbon dots (CDs), which they turned into LEDs by hardening the CDs.