News & Highlights
Sheng Dai at Oak Ridge National Laboratory leads the CMI project "Low-temperature electrochemical synthesis of graphite"
Project Description: To further investigate a recently developed process for the graphitization of amorphous carbon. Current graphitization technology is a very energy intensive process, requiring temperatures reaching 3000 C and taking up to three weeks for synthesis. Our technology requires a significantly lower temperatures of 800 to 900 C. This is achieved via the cathodic polarization of amorphous carbon in molten salts for only two hours. This technology has the potential to reduce the energy intensity of graphite synthesis significantly. Further, traditionally non-graphitizable hard carbons can be graphitized using this technology, enabling diversification in input feedstock including bio-derived sources of carbon.