\n\tSometime between 1500 and 1565 a large graphite deposit was discovered in Cumbria<\/span>, England. Because the graphite was extremely pure and solid it could easily be sawed into sticks. The graphite was actually thought to be a form of lead and called plumbago – Latin for lead ore.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Borrowable<\/span> Mine was soon ordered to be put under armed guard by Queen Elizabeth because the “lead” could be used to line the moulds<\/span> for making her armies cannonballs. But black marketers managed to smuggle out the graphite for continued use in pencils. Artists from all over the known world quickly learned to appreciate the qualities of Cumbria’s<\/span> graphite but it wasn’t until 1795 that Nicholas Conte<\/span> learned to mix graphite powder with clay and fire it in a furnace to actually make something with the equivalent quality of Borrowables<\/span> plumbago.<\/p>\n \n\tToday graphite (named for the Greek word meaning "to write") is attracting the attention of investors, and for just as good a reason as it once attracted all those artists 500 years ago.<\/p>\n \n\tCarbon<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tBy mass carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe (after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen) and it’s the 15th<\/span> most abundant element in the Earth's crust. Carbon is present in all known life forms and is the second (oxygen is first) most abundant element by mass – about 18.5% – in the human body.<\/p>\n \n\tCarbon is the stuff of life, it is the foundation, the chemical basis, of every living thing on Earth, yet because of its pervasive familiarity we all take it for granted.<\/p>\n \n\tAs investors we might want to rethink that.<\/p>\n \n\tAllotropes are structural modifications of an element – the allotropes of carbon include:<\/p>\n \n\tGraphite<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tGraphite has long been used in the aviation, automotive, sports, steel and plastic industries, as well as in the manufacture of bearings and lubricants. Graphite is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, is corrosion and heat resistant and is also strong and light.<\/p>\n \n\tCurrently, the automotive and steel industries are the largest consumers of graphite and demand across both industries is rising at five percent per annum.<\/p>\n \n\tThe steel industry uses graphite as liners for ladles and crucibles, they use it in the bricks which line blast furnaces and to increase the carbon content of steel. Graphite has already replaced asbestos in automotive brake linings and pads and is used for gaskets and clutch materials. Sparks plugs are also made incorporating graphite.<\/p>\n \n\tBut demand for graphite has been rising for other applications as well; Flexible graphite sheets, lithium-ion and vanadium batteries, fuel cells, semi conductors, nuclear, wind and solar power.<\/p>\n \n\tGraphoil<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tGraphoil<\/span> is flexible graphite sheets and one of the fastest growing graphite markets. Flexible graphite is desirable for compression packing and gaskets, whose ability to seal comes from filling gaps through which fluid might flow.<\/p>\n \n\tFlexible graphite products have valuable properties:<\/p>\n \n\tNuclear Power<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tGraphite plays a key role in many current, and future, nuclear reactor designs. The next generation nuclear reactor (the INL-led<\/span> Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP<\/span>) and other proposed high temperature, gas-cooled reactors) temperatures are expected to reach as high as 1,000 °C in their cores – graphite, having a higher melting point then steel, doesn't burn until 3,000 degrees Celsius. Because graphite has a huge heat-absorbing capacity it’s also used to keep nuclear fuel at safe temperatures during unexpected events – as an aside graphite is also used as a heat sink in computers.<\/p>\n \n\tChina’s Pebble bed reactors (PBR<\/span>) are a graphite moderated, gas cooled nuclear reactor. The base of the PBR's<\/span> design is the spherical (billiard ball-sized) fuel elements called pebbles. In the PBR<\/span>, thousands of pebbles are amassed to create a reactor core. The pebbles are made of pyrolytic<\/span> graphite (a protective graphite coating which moderates the pace of nuclear reactions) and they contain thousands of micro fuel particles called TRISO<\/span> particles. These TRISO<\/span> fuel particles consist of a fissile material such as 235U<\/span>. These reactors are cooled by non-explosive helium gas instead of depending on a steady source of water.<\/p>\n \n\tSubstantial amounts of graphite are required to charge the reactor at startup – 3000 tons and a percentage of the balls must be replaced each year as the fuel is spent necessitating a further 600 to 1000 tons of graphite each year of operation. China has one operating prototype, is now building two commercial units and plans to have 30 Pebble Bed nuclear reactors in operation by 2020.<\/p>\n \n\tFuel Cells<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThe two major types of fuel cells – the phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC<\/span>) and the proton electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC<\/span>) – currently under development rely heavily on graphitized<\/span> carbon. PAFCs<\/span> are for stationary power generation (primary or backup power for remote locations such as cell phone towers), whereas PEMFC's<\/span> have attracted widespread interest for use in transportation applications.<\/p>\n \n\tA fuel cell is not a battery – a battery is an energy storage device, it will stop producing electrical energy when the chemical reactants are consumed or it needs to be recharged. The fuel cell is an energy conversion device and will produce electrical energy as long as the fuel, and the oxidant, are fed to the electrodes.<\/p>\n \n\tMore and more fuel-cell applications are in development every year and fuel cell technologies rely heavily on graphite – the proton exchange fuel cell (PEMFC<\/span>) requires 80-100 pounds of graphite per vehicle.<\/p>\n \n\t"Large-scale fuel cell applications are being developed that could consume as much graphite as all other uses combined."<\/em> U.S. Geological Survey<\/p>\n \n\tSolar Thermal Collectors<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThe biggest limitation of Solar or Photovoltaic (PV) panels is that they can use only a fraction of the sunlight that hits them, the rest of the sunlight turns into heat which actually hurts the performance of the panels.<\/p>\n \n\tAn alternative that can make use of all of the sunlight, including light frequencies PVs<\/span> can't use, is the solar thermal collector – they collect heat that’s used to boil the water to make the steam which drives the turbine which creates the electricity.<\/p>\n \n\tTo further increase the efficiency of solar collectors, nanoparticles<\/span> – particles a billionth of a meter in size – are added into the heat transfer oils normally used in solar thermal power plants. In laboratory tests nanoparticles<\/span> increased heat collection efficiency by up to 10 percent. 100 grams of nanoparticles<\/span> provides the same heat-collecting surface area as an entire football field.<\/p>\n \n\tGraphite nanoparticles<\/span> are very efficient heat collectors.<\/p>\n \n\tVanadium Redox<\/span> Batteries<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tWhen the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow neither solar or wind plants are generating electricity, these two green energies need batteries to store the excess energy they can produce under optimal conditions. The vanadium redox<\/span> battery (VRB<\/span>) could be the perfect answer as they:<\/p>\n\n
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