Hmmm! This may be a cheap method, but there are other options with a low temperature kiln. Your previous 10 gr of sugar and ammonium chloride, to this add 10 gr of graphite powder and 2 gr of fine aluminum powder. grind it in a blender with a small amount of water for 30 min on low speed. Prepare a flat pan with a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil and place the mixture in the middle and allow it to settle as a flat surface. This could be allowed to evaporate for a few days. The ideal time to place it in the kiln if after it becomes tacky and will not shift when you raise the edge of the pan. Place it in the kiln at 160°C for 30 minutes and remove and allow to cool completely. The mixture will be hard and stiff enough to peel off the aluminum foil from the back and place this in a flat bottom Pyrex glass dish and return it to the kiln for one hour at 300°C. this will allow the mixture to degases the toxic fumes and will melt the aluminum into the graphite as it turns the sugar into grapevine as a medium, the blend is very hard and conductive and can be cut with an abrasive high speed rotary cutter or diamond blade. I would prefer to use a tile cutter without water as a lubricant instead of a hand held angle grinder, because the mixture can be fractured like glass if its cut uneven or with excessive vibration. This makes better electrodes for rechargeable batteries, use a piece of regular felt in two or more layers and use an aquias solution of potassium chloride as the electrolyte and you have a graphite-aluminum rechargeable battery as good as any lithium battery and much more stable and longer life. Cheers. Yes, my first degree was in chemistry at 16, followed by my electrical engineering degree at 21, and I specialized in microprocessors in the early 1970's in what became known as Silicone Valley, California. I hope I didn't over explain it, but enough for the basic chemistry student to follow and have a workable technology for free off of the internet.
I've been watching your videos for quite a while now(right around when I started working on my electric car design). You've single-handedly made me take an interest in chemistry. As a high school student, I'm obviously a bit limited in my capabilities but you've made so many videos about how to do these things at home with simple equipment and I appreciate it a lot :)
@@ThinkingandTinkering I agree wholeheartedly... finding this channel has been such a stroke of luck... now I watch a random vid almost every day You are exactly the teacher I'd have loved to have in my youth, man Greetings from Spain
I can picture forming this in a ceramic mold and graphenizing it in a microwave kiln. Easy to put an argon tap into a microwave oven shell for the inert atmosphere. Oh! that delightful feeling of mad science!
Just a thought. A while ago I made some very light weight carbon foam using a variation of the Naphtalene-Mediated Hydrothermal Sucrose Carbonization method. The article I took the method from suggested the foam would be "Ultralight Carbon Nanofoam". It was certainly very low density, but had very poor conductivity, so I didn't go any further. However the graphitization post process step you describe here sounds like something worth trying.
Chemistry and Physics dovetail beautifully as Sciences, but if you tie them together with Mathematics, that leads to Technology and Engineering. There you are; STEM in one sentence! If more youngsters (and older folk, but it's best to start when young) could grasp that, and be inspired by people like yourself, Robert, ever greater strides will be achieved. Thank-you for your continuous inspiration through this channel and through your Patreon-focussed output.
I think they are the two sides of the same coin mate and maths is the language to describe them. I personally think everyone should give it a go as at it's basics it really is simple stuff - though it does get complicated later for sure lol
Any time I need to mix dry components, I use powdered sugar. It seems to give a more even mix with less mixing than granulated sugar. BTW sulfuric acid + sugar is way more fun, but the reaction happens too quickly (without heat) if you use powdered sugar. Muriatic acid does require adding heat and the foam produced is much more dense.
@@oregonhoney753 good point - my store brand doesn't but its a good idea to look... although for this particular experiment corn starch could be useful as it heats up and becomes dextrose - science is full of accidental discovery.
Sugar and H2SO4 is highly exothermic reaction,... so, you get alot of heat (but you definitely mean,...extra applying of the heat). H2SO4 + sugar carbon you can also graphitize on high heat.
You can do this with bread. Put the slice(s) in a square container with a small hole in top. You can add argon before closing it if you wish. Heat to around 800 to 1200 degrees until all of the volatiles have burned off through the hole. Cover the hole and let go for a half hour.--- Pre tapping the hole and using a small bolt works pretty well for sealing it up. Remove and cool. There you go. Carbon foam suitable for a refractory. or semiconductor.
Mate, i really would love to have access to your laboratory facilities! And I’d happily be a lab assistant because you chase my brand of Nerdery! It’s useful information!
interesting, I have been looking at the online processes discovered in an attempt to recreate starlite, and had thought that adding other things to it might allow me to make it semiconductive, now I may have to add this to that mix, and stop at the former step or not go quite as high since I dont want it to become extremely conductive, but rather semiconductive so the contaminants can alter it to make diode like components, who knows, I might be able to produce a far more efficient peltier device, something I am kinda hoping to be able to do, since none of the ones I have seen thus far are embedding the PN junction material in aerogel, it seems like a sensible option especially if I can make a more thermally insulative semiconduction joint than tellurium bismuth does.
@@ThinkingandTinkering can't wait, most of the actual stuff beyond what I release from time to time here, I keep on Tox chat ever since I found a whole conversation about laser assisted vapor deposition I had with a friend, on skype (partially text partially voice call) pop up right after that on wikipedia as a removed group of pages, all of like 40,000 (I am not looking at the history now, so it might have been like 10,000 characters, not sure but I will come back and leave a reply with a link to their account page where their contributions are listed for reference) characters and 10 pages worth loaded on there, 8 new pages and 2 modifications of existing pages, word for word, and by a random user name made that day, all listing done in 36 minutes then logged off never to return in over 2 years now, even though everything they listed was removed with red text being the only trace you have to follow and see the revisions, and new pages they made. And the curious thing about all this? just to finish it off for the weirdness, is that everything I had conversations with him on tox for a completely different reason, included the needed aspects to make it properly work for 3D printing processes, were missing from the wiki info, only the stuff from skype was there. I can talk to you privately if you are wondering why we took it to tox but I still won't talk openly about that here due to the problems it could cause a whole lot of people, if I discussed this openly. at any rate, main reason most stuff is still on tox private is because I am not ready to release anything, but when ready everything will be open and public, concerning all my work for advancing 3D printing. and I will try to include as much footage as possible to hopefully allow full replication everywhere desiring to do so, :)
Could one of your foam recipes work to make N95 mask pucks????? Or basic filter material that one could easily apply to a piece of shirt to make an effective mask against the Corona virus????
hehe, right! the idea is that the foam has high surface area in a relatively small space, it should be able to hold more energy than a capacitor with similar size, a pencil is very solid, whereas this foam can have molecules of water suspended into the foam pores, or some other chemical, your imagination is the limit...
Hello Rob, I was wondering: do you know the thermal conductivity of this stuff? Working on a project that I want to use high thermal conductive graphene foam on.
You should try doing this with chitosan (available in capsules as a fat blocker from the chemist), its amine groups would dope the material with nitrogen post graphitisation. I suggest you boil the ground material post graphitisation in nitric acid. This would charge the newly formed aromatic nitrogen to ar-NH+ which could help them de-laminate (increase surface area) and also the charge would greatly improve conductivity as the positive charge sits within the delocalised polyaromatic mess and so can conduct by hole migration (similar mechanism to conductivity of polyanaline salts).
Can you make some by just wrapping some sugar in a small aluminum capsule or aluminum foil container to contain it. then wrapping several layers around that to trap the carbon dioxide and prevent it from oxidizing. then cook it until its ready? Seems like it'd be really simple to make. Not looking for a PERFECT result. just enough that it'll do something when you make a sandwich out of it and some copper electrodes or something.
@@Buzzhumma Well yes mate, a long illness can often curtail ones Fun. However i have a miriad of fresh new ideas that i would like to try. Maybe even do a video or 15 LoL.
Hello Robert, I am really surprised how you made the graphenic material. Not being a real chemistry fella, you really go something going here, so simple. Was thinking if you tried making capacitors, you should make the square instead of round. You would have a lot more capacity because of a lot less space would be wasted when you stack them tighter. Maybe you could try making some and showing us all on RU-vid. Thanks for keeping us all informed. At least someone is trying to us all informed. Good day too.
I like it mate and thought of doing a replication but the caps are £100 each and you need 12 I think - a bit expensive - but I am thinking about it and how to get around that
@Robert Murray-Smith The King of Random (RIP TKOR, you beautiful fool) made an arc forge from an old lantern battery, a scrap microwave and a refractory brick... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VTzKIs19eZE.html I smell your next video. My idea for a vacuum forge is a capped section of steel water main pipe lined with starlite and refractory brick with a thick borosilicate quartz viewing port on the lid. I will eventually build one so I can make my own synthetic ruby abrasive grit from aluminum oxide and chromium oxide.
Is this a 'better' carbon foam than those produced by the other methods, e.g sugar with baking soda as the 'blowing agent'? but grinding the reactants into fine powder first. As per the other video with 3 methods including the explosive one. Just asking from the point of view of very easily obtained materials versus the improvements gained by sourcing ammonium chloride. Does the sugar/bicarb foam graphetise ok in the kiln?
Robert, what is the difference between this "graphenic" substance and true 1 atom thick graphene? How are they different and how are they the same? When this is used in battery construction, what decrease/increase would be seen if using true graphene in contrast?
I bought some expanded graphite and put it in an ultrasonic cleaner with a small amount of water. What I got was dark gray/blackish water with pearl-like sparkle to it. Also had a bright, shiny silver layer floating on top. Had a little solids on the bottom that didn't do anything. Does anyone know if I have a graphene suspension.....or just graphite water? Or possibly a mixture of both?
@@ThinkingandTinkering I ran the solution through several coffee filters (the finest filters I have at the moment) and got a nice liquid with no sediment. Stays in suspension nicely, even when sitting untouched for days. I also sonicated molybdenum. I'm working on adding them to Si02 to make a "ceramic" sealer/protectant for automotive clear coat. I'm also working on an acrylic resin version.
For example, what came to mind in a perfect world would be to have some sort of form you would put the sugar and ammonium chloride in and go about the whole process that way. Almost like casting it all into shape and only needing to adjust for temperature
Robert great video again, it would be so nice if you could get and electron microscope to show the structure of the materials you made, I know that these are very expensive but it will be awesome
it would mate - a 'cheap one' costs 45,000 - the next time I have a spare 45k - I'll buy one. I am joking a bit - I was thinking about running a kickstarter just to raise money for that as it happens
Sugar and ammonium chloride are both water soluble, why not dissolve the mixture in water instead of grinding together? At the temperature you're raising the mixture to the water will boil off.
probably non. The folks here are basically split into 4 camps - people who like to know what's going on and keep in touch even though they will never do the experiment, people who will experiment but are beginners and will be careful as it is new to them, seasoned old hands who know exactly what they are doing and finally folks who just like to moan about everything but never do anything.
@@ThinkingandTinkering - I register in the first category, but can't keep from worrying about the second. I do know chemistry is daughter of safety, but Isn't the ammonium chloride / sugar mix pretty reactive and potentially explosive near open flames and high temperature ? Hence my deadpan comment. I'm sorry the format didn't convey my feeling.
Would this foam make a good furnace insulation? Imagine being able to pour a furnace like a cake. Perhaps bricks could be made and a furnace constructed of graphene foam bricks?
I have been following your channel off and on for about a year now I'm vary mechanically inclined not so much with the sparky things though . I'm trying to build a solar generator but I dont want to use batteries, supercaps are supposed to be cheaper and charge faster but I cant find anything that will explain the work comparince of a battery to a supercap in a way I can understand it . I know this isn't what you like to do you try to get people out there to experiment for them selves but unfortunately I am knee deep in a million things and dont have the time or frankly the knowledge so I'm begging you to give some kind of explanation of how many 2.7v 3000f capacitors would I need to run a 120v 15a circular saw for 15 min or if it even could . Thank you for your time I hope to hear from you .
I don't know what to say mate as I don't know how you need to understand - that is I am not sure what your learning style is so it's kind of hard to advise on what to look at that might help - all I can suggest is you keep plowing through the material there is until you find one that suits - we do have lessons and texts on the site - but equally they may not help
id like to see other uses of graphene carbon foam like heat management systems or something instead of cooling just move the heat elsewhere in a insulated container
@@ThinkingandTinkering oh i had a look around at your old videos you did the graphene thermal fluid huge help sadly i dont trust patent office and will release all my inventions long after im dead and dont have to deal with paperwork lol
