News — william blythe

William Blythe became corporate members of The Graphene Council in August 2016 as part of their ongoing research into graphene oxide. As the world’s largest community of graphene professionals, The Graphene Council works with experts worldwide to support the commercialisation of graphene materials.

Since launching graphene oxide as a commercial product via the GOgraphene webshop just over a year ago, William Blythe has worked to actively engage with the wider graphene community through several platforms, including opportunities presented via The Graphene Council. The team at William Blythe maintain an active calendar of graphene related events around the world, details of upcoming events can be found on the William Blythe website.

If you have any questions regarding the ongoing graphene oxide work taking place at William Blythe, or if you have any questions related to the products available on our GOgraphene webshop, please get in touch and a member of the team will be happy to help.

According to independent research, the global market for water filtration and purification membranes is estimated to be worth more than US$25bn. Given the potential for graphene oxide in water filtration, it is therefore unsurprising that significant academic research has taken place into graphene oxide membranes.

A key challenge when moving from academic research to commercial products involves ensuring the technology is scalable. G2O, a UK based graphene innovation company, has developed and patented graphene oxide membrane filtration technology and will be leading a £1m project to scale the technology over the next two years. The project includes a number of UK companies working on different aspects of the scale up. William Blythe is proud to announce that they will be working on this project as the graphene oxide material developer and supplier, optimising their graphene oxide for G2O’s membrane filters. Described as “an essential new technology capable of providing contaminant-free water in a cost-effective way for people in the developing world”, William Blythe are looking forward to working collaboratively on this project over the next two years.

If you have any questions about William Blythe's graphene oxide research, please get in touch.

The UK Government recently announced that new funding will be available for research around clean and flexible energy. Termed the ‘Faraday Challenge’, the funding has been described as “an investment of £246 million over 4 years to help UK businesses seize the opportunities presented by the transition to a low carbon economy, to ensure the UK leads the world in the design, development and manufacture of batteries for the electrification of vehicles”. While research included within this brief will be diverse, looking at all aspects of a battery and manufacturing processes, the question of whether graphene and related materials will find a home in this competition has come up many times already.

Research around graphene and graphene oxide in battery applications is wide ranging, with the materials most frequently considered for use in the electrodes, often as composites. The two-dimensional nature of these materials can be exploited to achieve high surface area materials, often enhancing the performance of existing materials. The possibilities are not limited to the electrodes though, graphene oxide has a broad range of properties which could be exploited in future generations of batteries. One potential example would be the continued use of these materials in composites, used to increase the mechanical strength of polymers. Improvements in this area could be employed in new housing for batteries, to increase the safety of the driver if the battery pack was impacted during a traffic accident.

The possibilities for graphene oxide in future generations of batteries is diverse, with opportunities presented in many aspects of the global transition into mainstream hybrid and electric vehicles. William Blythe has participated in Innovate UK funding previously and had an active interest in projects related to energy storage – with and without the inclusion of graphene oxide. If you have a project you would like to work on with William Blythe, please get in touch.

After a 12 month development programme, William Blythe launched their GOgraphene webshop to supply research scale quantities of graphene oxide to the market. Just over 6 months later, William Blythe is now seeking to not only increase their graphene oxide capacity, but also to start working with leaders in the field on developing application enhanced grades of graphene oxide.

Over the past few weeks, William Blythe have attended several graphene oxide and 2D material related events throughout Europe, listening to the requirements of the exciting technologies graphene oxide is being applied in. A recent event at the National Graphene Institute (NGI) in Manchester, UK, gave the opportunity for one of William Blythe’s Development Chemists to present on our graphene oxide. Looking at how the project was conceived through to commercialisation and next steps, the presentation allowed the attending researchers, both academic and industrial, to learn more about how William Blythe can help to develop and commercialise the materials they need.

Our team will continue to attend events to learn more about industry requirements, with the next one scheduled for the 21st June, also at the NGI. If you are holding an event and would like William Blythe to participate, please send us the details.

Air pollution is an increasing issue for people around the globe, especially those living in large cities. While the drive to swap to cleaner, greener technologies and alternatives grows, there is still a need to offer air purification in many technology areas. The issues of air purity affect not only the outdoor environment, but also indoors. The building, its decoration and the local levels of Radon gas can all impact the air quality inside buildings.

A 2015 paper by Xiong et al worked on combining absorption with photocatalysis. The concept was to increase the concentration of pollutants around a photocatalyst by absorbing them onto an adjacent surface. The photocatalytic oxidation process would then regenerate the absorbent, preventing the surface from becoming saturated and a “one use only” technology.

Their research focussed on the development of a graphene aerogel combined with titanium dioxide. Titanium dioxide is well known for its photocatalytic activity while graphene aerogels are of great interest due to their exceptionally high surface area. The group added the titanium oxide to a graphene oxide dispersion and then went on to functionalise the graphene oxide by reacting it with ethylenediamine before converting it into an aerogel. The group found that the shape of the aerogel was easily directed by the shape of the vessel it was formed in, offering great flexibility for creating air purification cartridges. At the time of publication, while the group had confirmed that the desired material could be made, further work was still needed to understand the purification capability of the TiO2/graphene aerogel.

If you would be interested in using graphene oxide in your research, please get in touch.

Procedia Engineering, 2015, 121, 957 – 960