Rice University discovers cheap & scalable Graphene production method

[HalGameGuru]

A Rice University grad student has discovered a new process for creating graphene. Flash Graphene uses almost any carbon based matter, placed between two electrodes, flashed to over 3000 degrees kelvin, to create graphene and bleed off most other elements as gasses in microseconds. The process promises to allow the production of graphene, that currently costs up to $200,000 per ton, to drop to a couple hundred per ton primarily in electricity costs. The raw materials can be primarily waste. Biological waste, plastics, papers, etc. Almost anything carbon based can be processed this way to produce graphene.

 

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As reported in Nature, flash graphene is made in 10 milliseconds by heating carbon-containing materials to 3,000 Kelvin (about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit). The source material can be nearly anything with carbon content. Food waste, plastic waste, petroleum coke, coal, wood clippings and biochar are prime candidates, Tour said. “With the present commercial price of graphene being $67,000 to $200,000 per ton, the prospects for this process look superb,” he said.

 

The graphene produced using this method is also far purer than many other methods, requires no massive investments of energy or dangerous chemicals, and is far easier to utilise in practical applications

 

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FG synthesis uses no furnace and no solvents or reactive gases. Yields depend on the carbon content of the source; when using a high-carbon source, such as carbon black, anthracitic coal or calcined coke, yields can range from 80 to 90 per cent with carbon purity greater than 99 per cent. No purification steps are necessary. Raman spectroscopy analysis shows a low-intensity or absent D band for FG, indicating that FG has among the lowest defect concentrations reported so far for graphene, and confirms the turbostratic stacking of FG, which is clearly distinguished from turbostratic graphite.

 

On top of the advancements in high tech and new tech applications it can also help in some surprising low tech applications

 

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Tour said a concentration of as little as 0.1% of flash graphene in the cement used to bind concrete could lessen its massive environmental impact by a third. Production of cement reportedly emits as much as 8% of human-made carbon dioxide every year.

“By strengthening concrete with graphene, we could use less concrete for building, and it would cost less to manufacture and less to transport,” he said. “Essentially, we’re trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane that waste food would have emitted in landfills. We are converting those carbons into graphene and adding that graphene to concrete, thereby lowering the amount of carbon dioxide generated in concrete manufacture. It’s a win-win environmental scenario using graphene.”

 

With affordable sourcing of graphene we could see a lot more research into practical applications and all those oft touted future energy sources and stores could actually be commercially feasible now that graphene can be produced for what amounts to pennies worth of electricity and garbage.

 

EDIT: One proposed use for this process is to shunt coal production from being burned for electricty production to being flashed for graphene production. Re-sequestering the carbon in a form that can be used in a plethora of high tech, and low tech, applications. Like cement, batteries, advanced meta-materials, etc.

 

 

 

Spoiler

Sources:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1938-0

https://news.rice.edu/2020/01/27/rice-lab-turns-trash-into-valuable-graphene-in-a-flash/

 

 

 

[dizmo]

Hurray. I can't wait to see this hit mass market. It's already in the process of making it's way into quite a few products. The price seems expensive, but the fact that you're using so little of it, I really don't think $200,000/tonne is that bad. Cheaper is always better though, as long as it doesn't deteriorate the quality.

 

Off Topic: That is one of the most beautiful campuses I've seen, of a place I've never heard of.

[HalGameGuru]

1 hour ago, dizmo said:

Hurray. I can't wait to see this hit mass market. It's already in the process of making it's way into quite a few products. The price seems expensive, but the fact that you're using so little of it, I really don't think $200,000/tonne is that bad. Cheaper is always better though, as long as it doesn't deteriorate the quality.

 

Off Topic: That is one of the most beautiful campuses I've seen, of a place I've never heard of.

This new process will bring the cost down to hundreds of dollars per ton. The 200k per ton is going to go the way of the dodo

[dizmo]

Just now, HalGameGuru said:

This new process will bring the cost down to hundreds of dollars per ton. The 200k per ton is going to go the way of the dodo

Provided it makes it to market, yes.

[HalGameGuru]

The process is something you could do in your back yard. It will spread

[Bombastinator]

35 minutes ago, HalGameGuru said:

This new process will bring the cost down to hundreds of dollars per ton. The 200k per ton is going to go the way of the dodo

This happened with carbon fiber in the 70’s /80’s. Carbon fiber was referred to as “spun diamond” because it was so pricey.  Then all of a sudden they were making fishing rods out of the stuff

[Totallycasual]

I'm particularly excited about graphene infused lithium batteries, they're already due to starting to hitting the high end of the market in the next 12-18 months.  

[Bombastinator]

28 minutes ago, Newenthusiast said:

I'm particularly excited about graphene infused lithium batteries, they're already due to starting to hitting the high end of the market in the next 12-18 months.  

Wtf?  How would that do anything?  “Graphemes infused”. Not how batteries work. 

[Vorg]

Look what it can do for electronics, using it in cpu's can do a lot for heat managment and reduction.

[bob345]

People need to stop calling things scalable without taking it to a higher scale. If its so easily scalable why have they not created a real pilot tool that proves out a scalable process. I would also definitely question the purity with the setup shown in the video. All that is really happening here is they are sputtering a layer of graphene on the walls of the glass tube kind of like how thin films of graphene have been made industrially for the better part of a decade.

[HalGameGuru]

53 minutes ago, bob345 said:

People need to stop calling things scalable without taking it to a higher scale. If its so easily scalable why have they not created a real pilot tool that proves out a scalable process. I would also definitely question the purity with the setup shown in the video. All that is really happening here is they are sputtering a layer of graphene on the walls of the glass tube kind of like how thin films of graphene have been made industrially for the better part of a decade.

If you read the papers they show if you use something carbon rich like coal the purity can be better than 99%, its turbostratic, meaning its easy to separate without solvents, and its showing some of the lowest defect concentrations of any method so far found.

 

And the scalability doesn't necessarily have to revolve around larger batches but parallel processing and automation.

 

Not JUST scalable in production but in separation and processing.

[Totallycasual]

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Wtf?  How would that do anything?  “Graphemes infused”. Not how batteries work.

I'm no expert but i have seen this discussed elsewhere. 

 

 

[williamcll]

But are the graphene produced here well aligned?

[greenmax]

3 hours ago, Newenthusiast said:

I'm particularly excited about graphene infused lithium batteries, they're already due to starting to hitting the high end of the market in the next 12-18 months.  

Yeah, Hobbyking has been selling graphene lithium lipos for some time now.

[Totallycasual]

4 minutes ago, greenmax said:

Yeah, Hobbyking has been selling graphene lithium lipos for some time now.

Ok, cool... so i'm not going crazy

[greenmax]

Just now, Newenthusiast said:

Ok, cool... so i'm not going crazy

yeah its been out for some time now, years I'd bet. Hobbykings dud rate is 10-15% but easy returns. I prefer 18650 over pouches myself for my battery needs. I'd love to have about 5kw of batteries laying around for arranging in format I require. Probably 60V bricks, but I'd look into various chargers before I'd plunge.

[Bombastinator]

Just looking at the title of the video gives me pause.

“cold fusion” Haven’t heard that term in a while.  “Cold fusion” was a debunked attempt to make desktop fusion based on an unrepeatable experiment.  It was basically a perpetual motion attempt.

 

Im not someone willing to give a lot of credence to a group still using it as their title.

 

Theres a whole lot of misinformation in this video.   It’s small pieces.  A lot of stuff is “almost but not quite” correct.  There’s a bunch of them though and they add up.

 

First one I notice is their “battery” isn’t one.  It’s a battery bank.  A system that contains batteries.  That one looks like it contains several.  No idea what type.  They keep going though.

 

They misstate the history of graphene and what the researchers did.  They misconstrue hex linked carbon as a concept (diamonds btw? Also hex linked carbon)

 

another thing I’m seeing is swapping the term “graphene battery” and “graphene enhanced” battery at various points.  They jump back and forth.  My suspicion is there are two different batteries that are being conflated.
 

Batteries are a cathode, an anode, and an electrolyte.  The various chemistries of lithium batteries have been about messing with the composition of these three things.   Usually the anode, mostly.  
Infusion is adding a small amount of liquid to another liquid.

There isn’t even a point where “infusion” would even be possible.  Graphene is a solid, and the only liquid is the electrolyte.  It doesn’t make any sense.

The holy grail of battery tech for years now has been a efficient solid electrolyte.  The two front runners are referred to as “glass batteries” and “graphene batteries”.  They’re research only things and have problems still.  Are they attempting to instill the qualities of graphene batteries into “graphene enhanced” batteries?

 

The whole thing just smells.
 

[Taf the Ghost]

This is still probably years from industrial production, but it's really great to see they're getting closer. This really matters, though Graphene is one step below "Carbon Nanotubes" on the Hype vs Reality tier.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

This is still probably years from industrial production, but it's really great to see they're getting closer. This really matters, though Graphene is one step below "Carbon Nanotubes" on the Hype vs Reality tier.

Cold fusion was on the hype train once too.  Way way back so was radium.  You could buy “radium enhanced” anything.   It generally killed you and didn’t do what it said it did but there were one or two exceptions.

[Taf the Ghost]

16 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Cold fusion was on the hype train once too.  Way way back so was radium.  You could buy “radium enhanced” anything.   It generally killed you and didn’t do what it said it did but there were one or two exceptions.

Well, the tier list is still topped by Fusion Power. It's the "just 20 years ago" for the last 60 years.

[BuckGup]

4 hours ago, Newenthusiast said:

I'm particularly excited about graphene infused lithium batteries, they're already due to starting to hitting the high end of the market in the next 12-18 months.  

Graphene lipos have been a thing since 2015 lol

https://www.propwashed.com/graphene-lipo-battery-performance-tests/

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?2592234-Turnigy-Graphene

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/graphene-1300mah-4s-65c-w-xt60.html

 

[Totallycasual]

8 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

Graphene lipos have been a thing since 2015 lol

Not really spread through the whole market though, like i purchased some 120AH deep cycle 12 volt Lithium batteries recently and there are no graphene ones

[Bombastinator]

It probably has really limited utility.  The different battery chemistries have different features.  Tesla does a cobalt aluminum one for example which is great for electric cars but near useless for everything else because it’s voltage output is so low.

[greenmax]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

Cold fusion

gets more 'clicks'

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, greenmax said:

gets more 'clicks'

Probably true.  I weep for humanity