While recycling efforts have evolved over the years, turning trash into graphene provides both environmental and business advantages. Find out more about how this recycling method can create a lucrative business.
The problem many businesses and organizations have with recycling methods is that they are rarely efficient and even more rarely profitable. However, turning trash into graphene might provide a profitable edge to attract more businesses into this recycling business.
This new technology can be revolutionary as it incentivizes people to recycle, allowing for better trash collection and utilization.
If you’re curious about the process of turning trash into graphene or what it’s for, read this article to find out. We’ll talk about what makes graphene so valuable and why it’s a great approach to recycling.
What is graphene?
Graphene is known to be a one-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms that are placed in a hexagon lattice. This particular material is the building block of graphite and comes from carbon allotype.
This material is valuable because of its metal-like properties and uses cases in medicine, aerospace, and electronics. Due to its rarity and its use case, graphene can command a high price.
Turning trash into graphene
The method was accomplished by a group of Rice University scientists when they started turning coal into graphene. Scientists then realized that they would be able to use different types of carbon sources as well.
The researchers then experimented with Girl Scout cookies, cockroaches, and even coffee grounds, finding that they could produce graphene out of these as well. The scientists called their method the flash graphene, which allowed them to create high-value graphene flakes from different raw materials.
They hooked the raw materials to capacitors and electrodes, giving them a shock worth 3,000° Kelvin.
Dr. James Tour, the experiment’s leader and Rice University professor of materials and nanotechnology, shared how the current made its way through the coal or trash with enough energy for the carbon-carbon bond to be broken. They then reorganized the substances into graphene.
Advantages of graphene production through the flash method
Tour shares how their technique has unique advantages when creating flash graphene in bulk since the excess energy comes out as light.
The traditional method of graphite mining can be hazardous to the environment, like other forms of mining. It was noted that aside from making the graphene more cheaply, they could also improve the overall environmental footprint through this manufacturing method.
Graphene also had huge advantages, with studies showing that just 0.1 percent of graphene added to concrete could reduce a third of its environmental footprint. Tour also described trapping greenhouse gases and converting them into graphene.
As for its benefits to coal mining companies, selling their coal to flash graphene businesses instead of coal power plants would be able to cut CO2 emissions from burning coal while also saving thousands of jobs.
Demand for graphene
The global graphene demand is estimated to be around US$1 billion. With this new method, using materials costing US$100 per ton could result in graphene worth thousands of dollars a pound.
Specifically, graphene commands an average price of around US$67,000 per ton. However, certain qualities of graphene can even cost up to US$450,000 per pound.
Advantages of using the flash graphene approach
Businesses experience certain benefits if they choose to adopt the flash graphene approach. These benefits can be felt internally and externally as they make an impact.
Cheaper to make
Since production costs can be cut, businesses could create more graphene with limited capital than mining. Flash graphene can simplify the process instead of investing in heavy machinery, mining site permits, and other complications.
Environmental advantage
Since flash graphene uses carbon products or trash to make graphene, it helps provide more uses for this specific trash. With landfills being a huge problem, by using a fraction of it for graphene production, businesses can potentially make a difference regarding the issue of waste.
Alternative coal industry
The mining of coal already causes environmental woes, but its use in power plants provides a whole new problem. If flash graphene businesses can offer a more attractive price for coal, this would result in coal mining companies being more incentivized to sell to flash graphene plants instead of power plants.
Conclusion
While flash graphene has been proven to work, it could take a while before it’s applied to a larger scale and on an industrial level. However, when applied, it could potentially provide a massive incentive for carbon to be used otherwise.
