Story highlights
- Graphene producer Haydale receives grants to develop graphene applications
- Projects include self-cleaning graphene enhanced coatings for industrial membranes
- Target market of $1.7 billion in 2014.
(2D Materials Magazine)- UK-based Graphene producer Haydale has been been awarded a number of research grants, totalling over £450,000. These new projects include:
Self-cleaning graphene enhanced coating
The development of low cost, self-cleaning graphene enhanced coatings for industrial membranes used in the cleaning and filtering of waste water, swimming pools, desalination and offshore drilling fluids, amongst others as part of the project recently announced by G20 Water. The project’s target sectors of nanofiltration from reverse osmosis (RO) and ultrafiltration accounted for $1.7 billion of sales in 2014.
Resins and coatings
The development of resins and coatings, incorporating Haydale HDPlas® functionalised microencapsulants, which emit UV fluorescent dyes under impact. The use of such systems in safety critical composite applications such as aircraft primary structures, pressure vessels, yachts, boats, sign posts, pressure pipes and car chassis structures would enable engineers to readily and easily detect damage in the form of a “bruise”.
Thermoplastic composite hydrogen pressure vessels
The feasibility of developing type V liner-less thermoplastic composite hydrogen pressure vessels for hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles. If it can be demonstrated that it is feasible to manufacture liner-less functionalised graphene enhanced thermoplastic composite pressure vessels with improved permeation resistance, this could lead to lighter, cheaper and safer hydrogen pressure vessels on vehicles. Research by UK H2 Mobility predicts that 10,000 Hydrogen vehicles will be sold by 2020, with an estimated annual market for storage vessels of £21 million.
A consulting assignment to review and advise on the transfer of aerospace led materials research into non-aerospace applications. This has been awarded as part of the Dual-Use Technology Exploitation (DUTE) Innovation Cluster.
Commenting on the grant awards, Ray Gibbs, Haydale Chief Executive said “The support of government is vital in accelerating the commercialisation of graphene based composite products and through our unique plasma treatment functionalisation process we will be at the forefront of developing and commercialising a whole new range of graphene enhanced composite materials. The awards also enable us to engage directly with prime OEM’s in the significant aerospace, automotive, rail and marine markets as well as enabling us to expand our technical team and capabilities in this area.”
