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September 2020 / 17 tion with a host composite material, such as plastic, metal, plywood, concrete, or others. Researcher Duy Luong notes that the project began after read- ing a scienti c paper on ash Joule heating, which can make phase-changing nanoparticles from metals. The process uses a custom-designed reactor that heats material quickly and releases noncarbon by-products as gas, which can be trapped. Luong real- ized after experimenting with the process using carbon black that the ash process could produce high-quality graphene. The research "Gram-Scale Bottom- Up Flash Graphene Synthe- sis," was published in Nature. According to James Tour, a chemist involved in the research, the ash graphene could be used to help bind and strengthen concrete. The material would partially dis- place cement — using as little as a 0.1 percent concentration of ash graphene — and lessen the concrete material's environmental impact by up to one-third. The new graphene-production method makes generating the material much more cost- effective. The resulting "turbostratic" graphene has misaligned layers that make separation easy, and researchers have found that cof- fee grounds in particular make pristine, single-layer sheets of graphene. The misaligned layers in the turbostratic graphene allow the material to come apart for interac- RESEARCH NOTES Researchers develop quick, inexpensive graphene production method Rice University researchers have developed a process that can trans- form bulk quantities of just about any carbon source into graphene akes that the researchers have dubbed " ash graphene." Car- bon sources can include coal, food waste, plastic waste, petroleum coke, wood clippings, biochar, and other solid carbon-based matter. The process is quick and inexpen- sive and produces what's called ash graphene, which is made in 10 milliseconds by heating carbon- containing materials to 3,000 Kelvin (about 5,000°F). A c c u r a t e . R e l i a b l e . D u r a b l e . PF-18L-S LOSS-IN-WEIGHT SCREW FEEDER PFM-S POWDER FEEDER MODEL Patented Thayer Scale "U-Trough" hopper assures reliable metering. Proven ability to feed difficult powders. Feed chamber with independently driven agitator assures precise, reliable delivery of material to the feed screw. T h a y e r s c a l e . c o m Gravimetric Feeders for Powder Flow Control. ( 8 5 5 ) - 7 T H A Y E R