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03/06/17
23:54
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Originally posted by jumpstart
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I'll do this them must go for a swim. (Don't try and extrapolate)
So then if you concede that exfoliation will be done in water and metallic ions will be present then you must also concede that it is only post this stage that purification can occur. Your statement then about kid gloves from mine to application can therefore be abandoned, if not for this, then also the limiting practicalities of it. You completely omitted any reference to this, despite claiming that you wouldn't cherry pick as you could respond to everything
Elcora use a dirty pneumatic hammer to fragment their blocks to gravel. Thereby blowing oily air over fresh surfaces. God knows what else is floating around in the air at the bottom of a mine. If the suggestion that graphene favourably adsorbs oil to its surface is correct, then no wonder they need a subsequent process.
I do not think its such a task to break away graphene into he biggest man handlable chunks possible. Doesn't matter the a little material on the external surface area is exposed relative to the final monolayer produced.
Just a little judicial care from the mine face to the exfoliator is all that is needed. Then, rather than what was shown in photos of the exfoliation, there might be some consideration of the environment the exfoliation takes place through to final packaging or use.
The impurities for FGR graphene reported are <50pm individually but total 120 ppm. Not bad at all if the Mn porcess is 2,200 ppm. more than order of magnitude different. I assume the sample had been subjected to all of the FGR contanination possibilities all the way through.
So a good result. But does not include the oil / air type contamination as it wasn't /couldn't be assessed. Only until it goes to SUT for BEST can it appear.
So, other than me, who is thinking about the whole chain through to commercialisation? Miners? Uni profs? FGR hands are full just doing mining.
I read an article concerning iron in graphene to catalyse benzene oxidation. FGR showed iron present. So even though measured total at 120 ppm, and if I was wrong assuming all the FGR processes were applied, then consideration of all source of contamination need to be part of commericlaisation, with an entity that knows how to do, guided by researchers on what not to do. This may lead to greater process control and/or the need for 99.99% or better cleaning. (I think Canada Carbon just uses a high temp baking.)
Which gets me back to inital comment many posts ago, the presence of impurities will under time and temperature begin to catalyse/break down or crosslink, or both, the bounding polymers soolutions and insulation materials. Who is thinking about these things. As far as I can tell no-one has a complete overview and my refrain that FGR is blindsided regarding science issues, and can add to that commercialisation difficulties.
It is going to be very interesting, if we ever get a chance to know, what the feed back has been on samples supplied. We will only know from FGR subsequent directions/actions.
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to myself
I made an error. I wrote 120 ppm. Its not its 1,200 ppm. So the FGR sample contained only half of the conc. of Mn oxidised GO. This strengthens the case for exploring for appropriate clean up process going-forward, but install a quality control process from mine face to use now anyway.
For now impurity level still might not matter in terms of the results from samples sent out, but there is room to improve when/if necessary. Implementation of QA now will at least start the process of more professional rigour esp. if you want top dollar.
(By comparison the Canada Carbon owned Miller Hydrothermal Lump/Vein Graphite Project in Alberta has 0.72 ppm after clean up, that is 99.9998% purity. Though this is nuclear quality, at least it shows a benchmark of what is possible. Grade and quality control is where FGR should be focussed to tailor output to specifi demands - why let the buyer do it and capture this part of the value chain? Maye many buyers want to do themselves, maybe others can't or won't.)
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