Y-Carbon Inc. has recently been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) phase I grant in the amount of $150,000 for scaling up production of its carbon nanomaterials. Y-Carbon, Inc. will occupy a new 2,000 square foot facility in Bristol for its pilot plant. In Bristol, PA Y-Carbon will produce larger quantities of proprietary nanoporous carbon in response to customer demand and with support from the NSF. In the past two years, Y-Carbon has successfully transitioned from producing milligram quantities using methods developed at Prof. Gogotsi’s lab of Drexel University to manufacturing tens and hundreds of grams of material without performance degradation.
“We are serious in moving towards commercialization; this project represents our commitment to our clients,” says James Horan, CEO of Y-Carbon, Inc.
In order to further scale up the manufacturing, Y-Carbon has partnered with Harper International, a leading manufacturer of custom-engineered thermal processing systems based in Buffalo, New York. A demo unit will be built first, which is expected to be completed by the end of February 2010. The success of this demo unit will lead to fabrication and installation of a pilot scale reactor. This project will also involve Prof Gogotsi’s research team who will assist in testing these carbon nanomaterials.
Prof. Gogotsi says that using carbon as a high-tech material, instead of burning it and polluting the environment with carbon dioxide, will allow us to protect the environment, develop new useful products and improve the quality of life at the same time. Carbon nanomaterials enable numerous new technologies, including natural gas storage, battery and supercapacitor electrodes, water desalination, and soil decontamination. Control of carbon porosity with atomic level accuracy that has been achieved by Y-Carbon will allow nanoporous carbon to replace activated carbons in many applications and increase the efficiency of devices that utilize carbon sorbents or carbon electrodes.
This pilot plant unit will be a continuous process reactor which will generate a sufficient amount of material for large-scale supercapacitor, water treatment and gas sorption applications.
Y-Carbon, Inc.
Y-Carbon wins R&D 100 Award
