Can randoms purchase a Kg of CNTs from you to experiment with?
Yes they can. Always looking for new applications!
Launch HN: Saratoga Energy (YC W19), Better Carbon Nanotubes from Carbon Dioxide
41–50 of 52 posts
Re: Launch HN: Saratoga Energy (YC W19), Better Carbon Nanotubes from Carbon Dioxide
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
thanks! in the case of the cement market, carbon nanotubes have been used in 1% concentration to improve the lifespan of cement. 4 billion tons of cement are produced every year. If carbon nanotubes where used in all new cement mixtures, that would be 40 million tons of carbon nanotubes per year, which would consume 148 million tons of CO2 per year. But perhaps more importantly, carbon nanotubes would reduce the repl…
I love this area of technology and the scale of your vision. For the battery application, do you need to use only electrically conducting nanotubes? Is your 27kWh per kg number for single-walled electrically conducting nanotubes? Do you need to filter out semi-conducting nano-tubes? I think that the improvements to batteries will have a better value proposition than strengthening concrete, though perhaps you can get…
We like the battery idea the best as well. We've chosen that as our first product to market. Me make multi-walled carbon nanotubes which are conductive in bulk. Its possible that there are non-conductive layers, but they are encased by conductive layers that counter act them. For concrete i've sen research showing 50% improvement in strength with 1% carbon nanotube concentration. We haven't confirmed this ourselves yet, but we are starting up a testing program soon. We are also planning on scaling with renewables like hydroelectric. If in the future carbon nanotubes can be used to replace aluminum as a structural material, there may be an opportunity to use they hydroelectric they were once operating on to power the process. But I agree, to reach a massive scale, we will need massive renewable energy. But I think we need that anyway!
Re: Launch HN: Saratoga Energy (YC W19), Better Carbon Nanotubes from Carbon Dioxide
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
thanks! in the case of the cement market, carbon nanotubes have been used in 1% concentration to improve the lifespan of cement. 4 billion tons of cement are produced every year. If carbon nanotubes where used in all new cement mixtures, that would be 40 million tons of carbon nanotubes per year, which would consume 148 million tons of CO2 per year. But perhaps more importantly, carbon nanotubes would reduce the repl…
Cool; so about 0.35% of yearly world production of CO2 per year from capture, and assuming 25% increased longevity, somewhere a little short of 1% due to cement reduction. ... that's pretty good, actually, might buy us another year, on its own...
maybe it'll buy us some time to figure out fusion! I think if we can get the electric car market to a more significant level as well (and power them on renewables) that would also have a big impact.
Re: Launch HN: Saratoga Energy (YC W19), Better Carbon Nanotubes from Carbon Dioxide
#44How long are the continuous fibers? CNTs can do some truly insane things if you make them long enough.
The CNTs we are making right now are about 10-20 microns long. Making them longer is a focus area for us. However, the nano-materials department at Rice has created a wet-spinning process the can bundle CNTs into continuous fiber. They aren't quite a strong as a continuous CNT from what i've heard, but still stronger than carbon fiber. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XDJC64tDR0
Re: Launch HN: Saratoga Energy (YC W19), Better Carbon Nanotubes from Carbon Dioxide
#45Can you selectively grow semiconducting tubes, or metallic tubes, or do you only get a mixture of semiconducting and metallic?
We grow conductive multi-walled carbon nanotubes. Some of the layers may be semi-conductive. But in bulk they are a conductive material. We haven't refined the process to the point where we can select for conductivity type yet.
Re: Launch HN: Saratoga Energy (YC W19), Better Carbon Nanotubes from Carbon Dioxide
#46I believe there is a competition to develop a method to collect carbon dioxide and turn it into something useful. Did you won that competition? This seems really promising and better than collecting CO2 and just dumping it underground.
There is the Carbon XPrize but I think they are a year out from announcing winners. There is a team using Molten Carbonate Electrolysis to create Carbon Nano-tubes in the competition. It sounds like the are not related based on the 2012 starting date in the post. The team lead has been working on this for 30 years.
We weren't ready to apply to the carbon xprize when it was announced. But we're ready to scale quickly with Y Combinator!
Re: Launch HN: Saratoga Energy (YC W19), Better Carbon Nanotubes from Carbon Dioxide
#47Re: Launch HN: Saratoga Energy (YC W19), Better Carbon Nanotubes from Carbon Dioxide
#48How long are the continuous fibers? CNTs can do some truly insane things if you make them long enough.
The CNTs we are making right now are about 10-20 microns long. Making them longer is a focus area for us. However, the nano-materials department at Rice has created a wet-spinning process the can bundle CNTs into continuous fiber. They aren't quite a strong as a continuous CNT from what i've heard, but still stronger than carbon fiber. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XDJC64tDR0
Have you characterized the anisotropy of the fibers yet? Mechanical, electrical, or otherwise?
Also thank you for the response!
Re: Launch HN: Saratoga Energy (YC W19), Better Carbon Nanotubes from Carbon Dioxide
#49> Our breakthrough in manufacturing cost enables battery manufacturers to use the optimal amount, allowing electric cars to safely recharge in 10 minutes or less. Well that's half the battle. The other half of the problem is delivering that amount of energy in 10 minutes, particularly in areas that are already maxing out their capacity on hot summer days.
My math may be a bit off but if you have a 230Ah battery (Telsa Model 3) and you want to charge it in 10 minutes you need something on the order of 1380A charging current even ignoring losses. At 350V, the voltage of the Tesla Model 3 battery pack, this is 483,000 Watts! There are major problems with this type of charging happening at scale at every level of the energy grid.
Most systems like this would be changed to go battery to battery with larger stationary storage on-site being essentially refilled from the net at the average use rate of all cars combined per day. This would delay this problem a little
Re: Launch HN: Saratoga Energy (YC W19), Better Carbon Nanotubes from Carbon Dioxide
#50Hi Drew! What you're doing sounds awesome -- more power to you, both figuratively and literally! Hey, I'd love to see an "About Us" web page on your website with team bio's, list of VC's, etc. (Hey, you've already written half of that page in what you've posted here!). Also, please ignore the naysayers here. Everyone in history who has tried to advance science has always had naysayers, it's just the nature of what yo…
Haha, thank you! Our site definitely needs an update. We have a more detailed website in the works! I'll keep you posted!
Hi Drew! You are Doing Ground Breaking work here,I wish you all the Success.
If you need any help in developing website,It would be my pleasure to do so,you can find my email in bio.