FGR to supply graphene for advanced cooling products July 25,...

FGR to supply graphene for advanced cooling products
July 25, 2018News

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Graphene manufacturer, First Graphene (FGR) and FlexeGRAPH have signed an agreement that will see FlexeGRAPH test the suitability of graphene as coolant in electrified systems such as batteries and high-performance computing and data centres.

FlexeGRAPH, a company based at a university in Canberra, will use the graphene supplied by FGR to test its suitability for use in electrified systems, so they can be charged faster with reduced capacity losses as well as improved cooling of high performance computing and data centres to reduce power consumption.

To date, whilst at the experimental scale, FlexeGRAPH has been sourcing its graphene under licence from the Canberra-based university. The opportunity exists for FGR to provide more economically priced large-scale graphene supplies in due course.

Read: Archer, FlexeGRAPH, to develop graphite and graphene advanced materials

“FGR is pleased to be working with FlexeGRAPH and providing commercial samples of graphene for use in its advanced cooling technology. This is an opportunity to functionalise our standard product and demonstrate yet another application which may benefit from our high quality, low cost graphene. The ability to produce graphene at scale and at a lower cost than our competitors is a compelling advantage that will be of material assistance to our customers,” FGR managing director, Craig McGuckin said.

FlexeGRAPH has developed a family of fluids enhanced with graphene nanotechnology to replace existing water and glycol-based coolants and liquids used in heat transfer applications. These results in enhanced thermal conductivity and heat transfer with excellent stability, even at elevated operating temperatures.

The main areas of focus and the benefits achieved by FlexeGRAPH are currently in car engine cooling, EV battery cooling, HPC and data centre cooling, and drilling and cutting fluids.

The market size for heat transfer fluids in Australia was $3 billion in 2016, and is expected to grow to $4.5 billion by 2022