Skip to main content

Graphene for Nuclear Power Plants, Problem Solver!

  • Heavy water is mainly used in nuclear power plants as the cooling agent and huge amounts of heavy water is produced in order to meet the regular needs of the nuclear plants. The problem with heavy water is that its production is very costly and million tonnes of carbondioxide gas is released during production of heavy water every year.
  • Researchers from University of Manchester led by Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo showed that heavy water production is also possible with the use of wonder material graphene. Their research revealed that membrane structures made by graphene could be used for this purpose. Furthermore, use of graphene membranes for heavy water production is very practical as well as feasible for industrial scale production. Graphene can directly eliminate building massive high power production plants for production purpose and provide fairly big amounts of cost reduction.
Image Retrieved From: http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news/newsid=47036.php

  • Graphene membrane is shown to be an effective filter for heavy water production because it efficiently separate different isotopes of hydrogen which is essential during production process. In order to produce the graphene membrane, researchers used chemical vapor deposition process. They additionally deposited palladium nanoparticles on the membranes as a catalyst. This process can be designed to become a cost and energy efficient process by small changes.
  • In addition to the information above, collecting heavy isotopes from water has also an environmental aspect. Release of these heavy substances to nature is a dangerous treat and this makes graphene membrane is an environment-friendly alternative thereby collecting these isotopes. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Molybdenum Trioxide Nanoparticles/Nanopowder and Applications

General Information about Molybdenum Trioxide                                                     Molybdenum trioxide is chemical compound with the formula MoO3. Its chief application is as an oxidation catalyst and as a raw material for the production of molybdenum metal.  Molybdenum Trioxide  is a very light blue powder. Molybdenum Trioxide Nanoparticles/Nanopowder and Their Applications                                                    Like many  nanoparticles/nanopowder , Molybdenum Trioxide nanoparticles/nanopowder are used as catalysts. These catalysis reactions include hydrogenation catalysis and cracking catalysis. Molybdenum Trioxide nanoparticles/  nanopowder are useful for...

Rundown about Silicon Oxide Wafer

The main insulating material used in micro-technology is Silicon Dioxide, which in chemical symbols is written as SiO2. In semiconductor technology, SiO2 thin film layers are mainly used as dielectric material film in transistors, capacitors (DRAM) or flash-memories. Silicon Oxide Wafers are produced using crystallization, solid state and other ultra-high purification processes such as sublimation. This process forms a cylindrical ingot, which is then sliced and polished to form wafers. Thermal oxide is a kind of "grown" oxide layer, compared to CVD deposited oxide layer, it has a higher uniformity, and higher dielectric strength, it is an excellent dielectric layer as an insulator . In most silicon- based devices, thermal oxide layer play an important role to pacify the silicon surface to act as doping barriers and as surface dielectrics. The simplest way to produce an insulating silicon oxide layers (SiO2) on silicon wafers is to oxidize silicon with oxygen, which ...

Hydroxyapatite Nanopowders and Their Applications

Hydroxyapatite, is a naturally occurring mineral form of calcium apatite with the formula Ca 5 (PO 4 ) 3 (OH). Pure hydroxyapatite powder is white. Naturally occurring apatites can, however, also have brown, yellow, or green colorations, comparable to the discolorations of dental fluorosis. Hydroxyapatite Nanopowder/Nanoparticles (50 nm, 99.95+%)  has been widely used as a biocompatible ceramic in many areas of medicine, but mainly for contact with bone tissue, due to its resemblance to mineral bone. In mammals, the skeleton presents a carbonated and partially substituted apatite, based on nanocrystal aggregates, and associated with collagen, building up 3-D structures present in various bone tissue conformations like trabecular or cancellous bone. There has been growing interest in developing bioactive synthetic ceramics that could closely mimic natural apatite characteristics. As mentioned before,  Hydroxyapatite Nanopowder  is the main inorganic constituent of bon...