In a bid to revolutionize energy storage and reduce reliance on foreign sources, a groundbreaking collaboration between Texas A&M University’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) is exploring innovative methods to convert petroleum coke into graphite.
This $3 million, three-year research project aims to streamline the production process by employing a lower temperature and shorter time catalytic graphitization technology. The new approach could decrease emissions, costs, and processing times associated with conventional synthetic graphite production.
The research team, led by Associate Department Head Dr. Micah Green and Associate Professor Dr. Faruque Hasan, is part of ARPA-E’s VISION OPEN program, which focuses on transforming energy in critical areas across the energy spectrum, including nuclear fusion, grid reliability, and developing chemicals and fuels. The ultimate goal is to convert fossil feedstocks into valuable carbon products rather than fuels.
The new process could lead to new sources for components in Li-ion batteries, potentially alleviating supply chain issues related to graphite. However, scaling up this technology presents challenges due to a lack of reliable designs and estimates on its techno-economic viability at different scales. To address these hurdles, Dr. Hasan’s group specializes in computational modeling, simulation, and optimization of emerging technologies, with the aim of determining optimal process design and operability domains for this exciting new technology developed by Dr. Green’s lab.
Once successful scale-up demonstrations are achieved, an industry partner, Oxbow Carbon, will conduct pilot-plant runs for preliminary assessments of large-scale processing. This collaboration could pave the way for a more sustainable and cost-effective graphite production process, with potential implications for energy storage technologies and the broader energy sector.
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