Effective high-yield recycling of waste paper to well-defined future platform chemicals and carbon nanospheres was demonstrated. The developed process utilized the exceptional combined effect of microwave irradiation and dilute acid catalyst to hydrothermally degrade cellulose in waste paper. The process was evaluated for three different waste papers, brown and white paper tissues and white printing paper. Different pretreatment processes were investigated to further increase the cellulose liquefaction efficiency. By utilizing soda pretreatment, liquefaction efficiencies as high as 88% were achieved. The obtained liquefaction products were fingerprinted by NMR and LDI-MS, while the solid residues were analyzed by XRD, SEM, TGA, and FTIR. As industrial-scale microwave reactors are currently under development, the developed method displays significant potential for recycling waste paper to green platform chemicals at the industrial scale.

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