Development of Catalyst Free Carbon Nanotubes from Coal and Waste Plastics

Abstract

DC-Arc technique has been used to synthesize carbon nanotubes from super clean coal, chemically cleaned coal, original coal and waste plastics instead of using high purity graphite in the presence of metal catalysts. The results obtained are compared in terms of yield, purity and type of carbon nanotubes produced from different types of raw material used. In the present study different types of raw materials have been prepared i.e. chemically cleaned coal and super clean coal, and the carbon nanotubes have been synthesized by DC Arc discharge method. Taking in account the present need of utilizing coal as a cheaper raw material for bulk production of carbon nanotubes and utilization of waste plastics (which itself is a potential environmental threat) for production of such an advance material the present work was undertaken. Since the process does not involve presence of any kind of metal catalyst, it avoids the cost intensive process of removal of these metal particles. The residual coal obtained after refining has major fuel potential and can be utilized for various purposes.

The Steam Gasification of Coal under Milder Low Temperature Conditions—Nonisothermal Kinetics Studies for Reactor Design

“…Organo-refining of coal generates an ultra-low ash, super-clean coal that may be used for the premium purposes, such as production of added value chemical feedstocks, carbon nanotubes, composites or nanocomposites, liquid fuels, specialty chemicals, etc. (Mathur et al, 2007;Sharma, 2008a;Dosodia et al, 2009). The use of coal-derived chemicals, such as AO and LP, helps in making the process self-contained and, thus, cost effective.…”

A comparative study of electrical, EMI shielding and thermal properties of graphene and multiwalled carbon nanotube filled polystyrene nanocomposites

“…Raman spectroscopy is a most important technique for characterizing graphene because it can interpret fine structural and electronic information with disorder and defect structures in graphene . We acquired Raman spectra using 514 nm radiation.…”

“…Three main characteristic peaks, the D, G and 2D obtained in Raman spectrum of graphene. D band is obtained due to the in‐plane breathing vibration mode, and the G band is resulted due to the doubly degenerate inplane vibration mode, which results in two peaks at about ∼1350 and ∼1,580 cm −1 , respectively . The most noticeable peak is the 2D band obtained at ∼2,700 cm −1 , which has been used to differentiate between monolayer, bilayer, and few‐layer graphene on the basis of the position and shape of the 2D band.…”

“…Research work in the authors’ laboratories has been extended to the use of the much cheaper carbon feedstocks for the production of carbon nanotube and graphene. This included the use of Jatropha oil , bituminous coal, super clean coal , Pongamia and palm oil , waste plastics , and presently even CO 2. The CNTs obtained were characterized and these were used for the production of nanocomposites by using polystyrene which showed interesting electrical and thermal properties.…”

Synthesis of nano-carbons from different waste plastics and diverse catalysts

“…CNTs have a wide range of potential application in composite materials, microelectronics, electrochemistry (batteries and solar cell) and biological field [61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80]. Laser ablation of carbon [81][82][83], carbon-arc discharge [47,76,[84][85][86] and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) [87][88][89] are three usual methods to generate CNTs. Purification and non-limitation of the sample size make CVD more popular than the other two methods to generate CNTs [90].…”