[nanoPost] Supercapacitors

Company Sweden

The company uses a chemical approach to make nanostructured carbons from carbon containing mineral materials, mostly carbides. Due to the well-defined location of carbon atoms in crystal lattice, carbides award the final carbon with certain pore structure and material structure depending on the precursor carbide material chosen. The company has ennobled the long-known carbide chlorination process.

The nanoscale research of carbon materials through many years resulted in a well-established carbon synthesis process. The company  has developed the pilot synthesis methods for scale-up.

Test samples for the carbon R&D are made in stationary bed reactors. For larger amounts, used in applied R&D, rotary kiln and fluidized bed reactor processes were developed. The company  researchers, through their studies and hundreds of experiments, developed the carbon making process that enables to vary the carbon pore size simply by adjusting the right synthesis parameters, like temperature, gas flow, reaction time etc.

Carbon synthesis methods made it possible to produce carbon material considering the properties desired for application. By varying the conditions of removing the metal atoms from the carbide crystal lattice, The company can give requested nano access to the skeleton body of carbon particle;and this can be done without any additional modification of carbon.

Product:

Varying pore size by process parameters
Controlled nanostructure and crystallinity
Controlled dominating pore size at nanolevel
Tuned pore size distribution
Optimized structure and porosity depending on the application

P ore modification
For fine-tuning the pore parameters, The company has developed patent protected methods for porous carbon modification. Traditional carbon modification is made by carbon surface activation. Carbide originate carbon is highly active carbon without any additional activation. However, even though the well-adjusted chlorination conditions can control pore size, there are chemical and morphological reasons limiting the choice of pore size directly from synthesis.

The pore modification method allows carbon treatment to take place in pores or inside areas where modification is wanted and leaves the rest of carbon material almost untouched. The method improves also the access to the pores. Using the nanostep modification the loss of carbon material is minimal. Nanostep modification method utilizes the  carbon behavior to act as molecular sieve for certain molecules.

Through special treatment it allows to trap the liquid modification agent into the pores or areas planned to be modified. If appropriate process parameters are applied, the modification takes place only in parts where modification agent was trapped. The method and its variations have multiple-use to microporous carbon material. A reorder for modification is determined by desired result and of course, depends on the carbon quality used. The method is very profitable for widening pore size by a step of 0.1 nm. This modification allows making porous carbon materials with very narrow pore size distribution, for instance material with more than 70% of pores in the range of 6-10 Å (0.6-1.0 nm).

Nanostep modified carbons with adjusted pore size performs well in many adsorption applications.

Applications

carbon materials are most suitable for adsorption applications where microporous carbon with predefined pore size and/or narrow pore size distribution is required.

Considered applications :

Supercapacitor electrodes
Gas storage
Battery electrodes
Filtration
Molecular sieves for separation of specific components from gases and liquids
Drying gases and liquids
Desalination of water
FC components
Catalyst supports