H2020Индивидуална стипендия2015–2017

GRAPHENERGY3 · Novel Electrochemical Exfoliation Approach to the Synthesis of Large Area, Defect-Free and Single Layer Graphene and Its Application in Fuel Cells

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2015-08-17 → 2017-08-16
Финансиране от ЕС: 195 455 €
Участници: 1
Схема: MSCA-IF-EF-ST

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Графенът се изследва като филтър за разделяне на водородни изотопи, като например тежката вода от обикновената. Това е важно, за да се намалят огромният разход на енергия и разходите при производството на материали за ядрени реактори и медицината.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

Novel Electrochemical Exfoliation Approach to the Synthesis of Large Area, Defect-Free and Single Layer Graphene and Its Application in Fuel Cells

Separating hydrogen isotopes is a task of vast proportions. Over a thousand tons of heavy water (D2O) are produced every year to supply nuclear reactors worldwide as well as for medical and research applications. The production remains expensive for two reasons. First, the low natural abundance of deuterium (0.015%) implies that huge amounts of water should be processed (the industry standard for initial enrichment is 20% of D2O). Second, current technologies often need hundreds of stages to achieve the required degree of separation. This means that heavy-water plants are large even compared to many chemical plants. These issues result in high capital costs and large energy consumption. Indeed, producing 1 kg of enriched heavy water requires about 10 MWh , the annual energy consumption of a typical US household. Separating tritium—hydrogen’s heaviest isotope—is equally important and challenging, not least for its radioactivity. Nuclear reactors produce tritium during their operation, which has to be continuously removed to ensure optimum performance. Furthermore, experimental fusion facilities require tritium as a fuel, whereas accidents like the one at Fukushima Daiichi leave behind thousands of tons of diluted tritiated water. The current demand stimulates search for new separation technologies that could provide higher separation factors, reduce the number of stages and minimize the energy consumption. It has recently been shown that perfect monolayers of graphene – impermeable to thermal atoms and molecules – are permeable to hydrogen nuclei. Moreover, the two-dimensional (2D) crystals could efficiently separate protons from deuterons. However, those studies used micron-size crystals obtained by exfoliation, a method unsuitable for industrial-scale applications. So the aim of this project is to explore the feasibility of graphene-based electrochemical pumps for industrial-scale separation of hydrogen isotopes.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Large area, scalable production of single layer and defect free graphene is important for its use in industrial applications. Currently, common methods used to prepare graphene include micromechanical cleavage, chemical vapor deposition, and chemical reduction. However, all these methods have their own shortcomings, for example, difficulty in scale-up or poor quality due to significant defects. To address this issue, in this project, we will focus on developing a novel electrochemical cathodic exfoliation approach to produce high quality graphene. Non-covalent edge-functionalization will be employed to open graphite edges. Upon a negative potential applied on the functionalized graphite electrode, H+ cations from protic ionic liquid electrolyte will be inserted into graphite interlayers and be reduced to hydrogen gas to further open the edge of graphite, which will facilitate the larger imidazolium cations to intercalate, expand and completely exfoliate graphite to single layer graphene. This cathodic exfoliation approach is nondestructive to the resultant graphene, and maintains its perfect structure and electronic properties, which will result in high electrochemical stability and benefit the performance of graphene-based fuel cell electrocatalysts. Finally proton exchange membrane fuel cells will be fabricated with graphene based electrocatalysts above and these are expected to exhibit high power density and long term durability, which may produce a promising future energy technology.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER · ManchesterКоординаторОбединеното кралство