Chemical Engineering April 2022 - 9

Pilot plant for graphene production uses
flash Joule heating
A
pilot plant is scheduled to be completed
later this year for the production
of graphene using a technology
known as flash Joule heating (FJH).
Developed in the laboratory of James Tour at
Rice University (Houston; www.rice.edu), FJH
involves forcing brief pulses of high-voltage,
high-current electrical current through a carbon-based
material to quickly heat it to very
high (~3,000K) temperatures.
" The high temperature breaks all the
chemical bonds, allowing the non-carbon
atoms to sublime out of the mix, while the
carbon atoms form two-dimensional sheets
of graphene, " says Tour. " Because the pulse
is so brief and the temperature rise so rapid,
FJH has a much smaller carbon footprint
than that of existing graphene-production
methods, " Tour adds.
The pilot plant is being constructed by a
company Tour co-founded to commercialize
the technology, called Universal Matter
(Houston; www.universalmatter.com), which
officially licensed the technology from Rice.
FJH overcomes a number of limitations
observed in existing processes for making
graphene, such as exfoliation of graphene
layers from graphite. FJH can be carried
out at substantially lower cost than other
graphene-production methods, it generates
a higher-purity graphene, and does
not have the same environmental issues. In
addition, the raw materials for FJH are lowcost
and plentiful sources of carbon, such
as petroleum coke, anthracitic coal, used
tires and waste plastics. Graphene produced
by FJH is in the form of a powder,
which can be dispersed into a variety of
materials to enhance strength, toughness,
conductivity and other properties.
Another key differentiator for FJH is its
ability to produce a form of graphene called
turbostratic graphene. Graphene in this form
has layers that are rotated slightly relative to
each other, which minimizes inter-layer coupling
and stacking (compared to conventional
graphene) and makes it better able to
disperse easily and evenly into other materials,
Tour explains.
Beyond graphene production, FJH is a
technique that can be applied to a widening
range of materials-recycling applications,
including harvesting precious metals from
electronic waste and improving the extraction
of rare-earth metals from waste streams
like coal flyash.
Biotechnology (IGB;
Stuttgart, Germany;
www.igb.fraunhofer.
de). " Now we are also
looking at the raw materials
contained in the
wastewater. " Scientists
from Fraunhofer
IGB, the University of
Stuttgart, the University
of Kassel and the
Technical University
of Kaiserslautern are
working on the sustainable
biorefinery,
together with the companies
SolarSpring,
Deukum, Nanoscience
for life, Umwelttechnik
BW, the city of
Erbach and the Steinhäule
Treatment Plant
Administrative Union.
For the recovery of
phosphorous, IGB's
ePhos process uses a
sacrificial anode made
of magnesium, enabling
the phosphorus
to be electrochemically
precipitated as
(Continues on p. 10)
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Chemical Engineering April 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering April 2022
