New, more economical, method of
graphene production developed
4 | MANE ENGINEERING | MAY 2018
Largest Mechanical British Puppet starts historical heritage tour
Video: madmickshere
To mark the 10th anniversary of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape being added to the list of World Heritage Sites (UNESCO) the largest mechanical puppet ever constructed in Britain is touring industrial heartlands.
Weighting almost 40 tons and towering 11m (36ft) the mechanical miner is visiting areas with historical industrial pasts. ■
"This marks a unique chance to celebrate the achievements and reflect on the sacrifices of our industrial heritage” Tourism and culture minister Lord Elis-Thomas, BBC News (2018)
A team led by the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a lower-cost, and more environmentally friendly, method to yield graphene.
The preceding method utilised shearing forcers to exfoliate graphene layers from graphite. The layers are then separated in large amounts of organic solvent. The new method claims to use 50x less solvent and is achieved by using pre-treated graphite in alkaline conditions - triggering flocculation. Flocculation is the process in which clustering layers produce graphene slurry without the need to increase solvent volume. The slurry can then be separated into monolayers producing high-quality graphene and its composites according to Prof Loh Kian Ping from NUS.
He further states that, “Our technique, which produces a high yield of crystalline graphene in the form of a concentrated slurry with a significantly smaller volume of solvent, is an attractive solution for industries to carry out large-scale synthesis of this promising material in a cost-effective and sustainable manner.” (The Engineer 2018) ■