Isn’t it much more expensive to use graphene than carbon black?
The quick answer is yes – today graphene is more expensive than carbon black, especially for dissipative applications. Part of it is because graphene is not yet as widely produced as carbon black and because the industry is more accommodated to carbon black. The amount of graphene required is however substantially lower than that of carbon black, which means that the price difference is mitigated. However, there is more to the comparison than just the price – graphene owns sustainability advantages over carbon black. Sourcing of carbon black is solely based on incomplete combustion of heavy petroleum products. Graphene however can be obtained by exfoliating naturally occurring graphite or recycled graphite. Therefore, graphene as a product has a substantially lower carbon footprint compared to carbon black.
What industries and applications do you think would benefit the most from exchanging from carbon black to graphene?
We can unlock more conducting regions which opens up several opportunities. Think of how often you use rubber every day, from the car you drive to the soles of your shoes. Now, replace that common rubber with a semi-conductive graphene containing rubber. You have just incorporated a resistive sensor in your system without changing or adding more steps to the manufacturing process. Is graphene the facilitator for the internet-of-things and global connectivity that we’ve been talking about for 20 years or so? Well, this is for the industry to find out.
You now explored resistivity and conductivity. Are there any other comparative tests that would be worth doing?
The combination of graphene properties is truly attractive in the transition to a more sustainable world: thermal, conductive, mechanical, tribological, just to mention a few. By investigating all properties that carbon black is used for today, we can truly identify graphene’s position in this industry
If I want to explore the advantages of graphene composites for polymers, how can Graphmatech help out?
Graphmatech produces and sells masterbatches with all polyolefins (PEs, PP) and are working on formulations for engineering polymers such as PA and POM. If you want to improve the characteristics of your polymers with graphene composites, please contact [email protected] for a discussion on how we can develop together.