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Herbert-Quain t1_j96pd0m wrote

Reply to comment by PO0tyTng in Scientists create carbon nanotubes out of plastic waste using an energy-efficient, low-cost, low-emissions process. Compared to commercial methods for carbon nanotube production that are being used right now, ours uses about 90% less energy and generates 90%-94% less carbon dioxide by Wagamaga

>temperatures over 3,100 kelvins

How are commercial procedures less energy-efficient than that?!

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IPutThisUsernameHere t1_j96ptw9 wrote

For additional context, steel melts at about 2,500 F - less than half the temperature cited in this process.

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PO0tyTng t1_j96t56j wrote

It’s not like nanotubes need to be made in 1000 gallon cauldrons. I would think we would need far less material than raw/smelted steel. So it could be made in a kiln or something. Honestly though the amount of heat needed is not a hurdle in scaling this up.

Really manually intensive /precise processes like making a sheet of graphene have soooo many more barriers to scaling than simply “apply more heat”

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ReasonablyBadass t1_j99eja2 wrote

Efficiency has nothing to do with how much energy you need. It's about the ration between resource use and end product.

If other processes need less heat but produce a lot of unusable waste, they are less efficient.

Edit: also,flashing, afaik, means for only a very short amount of time. Might not be all that mich energy overall, actually

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