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from the mythbusters-approach-to-results dept.
Forget chemicals, catalysts and expensive machinery — a Kansas State University team of physicists has discovered a way to mass-produce graphene with three ingredients: hydrocarbon gas, oxygen and a spark plug.
Their method is simple: Fill a chamber with acetylene or ethylene gas and oxygen. Use a vehicle spark plug to create a contained detonation. Collect the graphene that forms afterward.
Chris Sorensen, Cortelyou-Rust university distinguished professor of physics, is the lead inventor of the recently issued patent, "Process for high-yield production of graphene via detonation of carbon-containing material". Other Kansas State University researchers involved include Arjun Nepal, postdoctoral researcher and instructor of physics, and Gajendra Prasad Singh, former visiting scientist.
"We have discovered a viable process to make graphene," Sorensen said. "Our process has many positive properties, from the economic feasibility, the possibility for large-scale production and the lack of nasty chemicals. What might be the best property of all is that the energy required to make a gram of graphene through our process is much less than other processes because all it takes is a single spark."
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Tuesday January 31 2017, @08:41PM
The advantage to this method, is it scales up...and up...and up...and OH SHI...*carrier lost at smoking crater*
(Score: 4, Funny) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 31 2017, @08:43PM
That black ash lining my car's pistons is precious graphene, not a giant pain in the ass that gradually ruins the oil?
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Tuesday January 31 2017, @08:55PM
Well, your PITA is still there, and still ruining oil, but is now suddenly valuable? ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:37PM
I'm gonna go with "worthless" instead, with the gas and oil byproducts baked into any graphene at rather high temperatures repeatedly. I know I know, boo hisss get off our karma train!
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Tuesday January 31 2017, @08:55PM
Therefore, you are going to be sued to pay a patent license fee. Collecting graphene from your car is patent infringement, regardless that the motors have been generating that byproduct for more than 100 years. Soon there will be a patent license fee per kilometer (or mile) for your illegal graphene producing vehicle. Patent enforcement must become great again, no freeriders allowed!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Dunbal on Tuesday January 31 2017, @09:23PM
Clearly anyone with bunged up cylinders, spark plugs and pistons can claim prior art.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:13PM
I read the patent because it was interesting, toward the end there's some theoretical verbiage on why it works and detonation/ping would rapidly destroy an engine so no its not really "IC engine as prior art".
There's a whole beefy wikipedia article on graphene production. Its one of those things that's very easy to make and very difficult to make controllably and efficiently and cheaply. Like "growing plants to brew into ethanol as a fuel" it looks so simple but when you run the numbers it doesn't work well and doing it economically is very challenging (or perhaps impossible under all but unusual conditions).
Also BTW the journalist coverage implies the problem is solved however the particles are small, so if you want to do "big stuff" you have to keep doing other things. Of course little graphene particles are useful too.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday January 31 2017, @11:34PM
TIL:
> Detonation typically involves a supersonic exothermic front that accelerates through a medium that eventually drives a shock front propagating directly in front of it.
> Deflagration is typically described as subsonic combustion propagating through heat transfer.
But from the patent description, it sounds like running your engine at over 4000K would (very briefly) do the trick.
Sorting the graphene from the molten metal shards might not be the easiest step.
(Score: 2) by mr_mischief on Tuesday January 31 2017, @11:56PM
Per kilometer in the US and Liberia and per mile in the rest of the world, of course.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday February 01 2017, @12:20AM
Please reasonable units like Calories per bushel per furlong^3 per fortnight.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday February 01 2017, @08:11AM
How many cubits to the hogshead do you get?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Wednesday February 01 2017, @06:02PM
about a byte.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01 2017, @06:57AM
(Score: 3, Funny) by VanderDecken on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:05PM
... is the entertainment value.
The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
(Score: 2, Touché) by islisis on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:30PM
they didn't invent a patent detonation techique instead and win the nobel prize
(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:41PM
What might be the best property of all is that the energy required to make a gram of graphene through our process is much less than other processes because all it takes is a single spark."
Er... a single spark plus the energy released by a whole chamber full of hydrocarbon gas (or "fuel" as it is sometimes known) and oxygen going foom (unless that they're saying all the carbon gets turned into graphene?) Seriously hope that brainfart came from a press officer and not one of the researchers...
Otherwise, my car uses negative energy to move because in normal conditions the engine produces all the energy needed to run the sparkplugs, with enough left over to drive the radio, air con, heater, lights...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 31 2017, @10:50PM
You are technically correct (yes... yes...), but clearly they were not referring the entire environment when making that statement. I had taken it to be, "other processes are energy intensive because they need to do ____ to the ingredients, whereas this process only requires a bit of electricity and the ingredients do the reactions on their own."
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Tuesday January 31 2017, @11:26PM
other processes are energy intensive because they need to do ____ to the ingredients
This process needs to burn a portion of the ingredients (presumably in order to create the required temperature and pressure).
But yeah, I don't question the claim that this may be the most efficient process (c.f. internal combustion vs. steam) - just the silly "all it takes is a single spark" comment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01 2017, @03:24AM
Redneck physics FTW!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01 2017, @04:17AM
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday February 01 2017, @04:45AM
The heat flash may not be as big of a deal for steel or iron to handle, will probably requiring cooling though.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by ese002 on Wednesday February 01 2017, @04:18AM
From TFP:
The graphene nanosheets may be stacked in single, double, or triple layers, for example, and may have an average particle size of between about 35 to about 250 nm.
Not even close to macroscopic.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 01 2017, @02:30PM
They're always talking about graphene. If they care so much about the stuff, why not harvest 10 million used notebooks from elementary school kids and ship 'em to India so those kids can peel off the layers with scotch tape? Boom, more graphene than you can shake a stick at, and Indian kids get to exercise their age-old right to go to work and earn money.
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;-)
Washington DC delenda est.