sci:
The Concorde was the first commercial supersonic aircraft to have been built. Image: Wikimedia Commons
In
2011, a chance encounter under the wings of Concorde at Duxford Air Museum,
Cambridge, with Trinity College Dublin Professor Johnny Coleman, would set in
motion a series of events that would lead, six years later, to the development
of a 20t/year graphene manufacturing plant.
As
soon as we got talking, I was impressed by Johnny’s practical, non-nonsense
approach to solving the scalability issue with graphene production.
Coleman is a
physicist, not a chemist, and believed that the solution lay in mechanical
techniques. Following the conference, Thomas Swan agreed to fund his group for
four years to develop a scalable process for the manufacture of graphene.
Just a nanometer thick, graphene consists of a single layer of carbon atoms joined in a hexagonal lattice. Image: Pixabay
Coleman and his
team initially considered sonication – when sound waves are applied to a sample
to agitate its particles – but quickly ruled it out due to its lack of
scalability. He then sent one of his researchers out to the shops to buy a
kitchen blender. They threw together some graphite, water, and a squirt of washing-up
liquid into the blender, switched it on, and went for a cup of coffee.
When
they later analysed the ‘grey soup’ they had created, they found they had
successfully made few-layer graphene platelets. The group then spent months
optimising the technique and worked closely with Thomas Swan scientists to
transfer the process back to Thomas Swan’s manufacturing HQ in Consett, Ireland.
Graphene is 300 times stronger than steel.
The plant can make
up to 20t/year of high quality graphene. It uses a high sheer continuous
process to exfoliate graphite flakes into few-layer graphene platelets in an
aqueous dispersion.
The
dispersion is stabilised by adding various surfactants before separating out
the graphene using continuous cross-flow filtration devices developed with the
support of the UK’s Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), part of the High Value
Manufacturing Catapult – a government initiative focused on fostering
innovation and economic growth in specific research areas.
Using sticky tape, scientists pulled off graphene sheets from a block of graphite. Image: Pixabay
This de-risking of
process development using a Catapult is a classic example of effective government
intervention to support innovative SMEs. CPI not only showed us it worked, but
also optimised the technique for us.
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