[HN Gopher] Producing graphene in bulk using waste food, plastic... ___________________________________________________________________ Producing graphene in bulk using waste food, plastic and other materials Author : anchpop Score : 31 points Date : 2022-03-02 21:21 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (news.rice.edu) (TXT) w3m dump (news.rice.edu) | Gravityloss wrote: | Awesome! | | I wonder if the walls are made of graphene reinforced concrete, | if I drill some holes, how dangerous is it? | zdragnar wrote: | With or without graphene, if you're drilling holes into | concrete without a mask, you're gonna have a bad time. Rock | dust, mineral dust, even wood dust from a saw are all | carcinogens when inhaled. | | I imagine the danger isn't significantly increased unless the | graphene is layered thickly enough that the concrete doesn't | bond all the way through it. Either you're worried about | concrete dust, or you are worried about graphene dust. Concrete | dust with bonded bits of graphene are going to be the same | physical size as concrete, so I wouldn't expect it to be | significantly more dangerous combined. | Gravityloss wrote: | Of course I'm wearing a mask when drilling into a concrete | wall. Nevertheless the question stays. | agumonkey wrote: | some people working in the field said it wasn't proven to be | graphene (disagreement on methodology basically) and that it | wasn't replicated | croes wrote: | Is it a good idea to burn food instead of turning it to compost? | hosh wrote: | That was my thought too. There's some hard-to-compost stuff ... | but I think those are still more valuable as biochar than | graphene, from an ecological perspective. | | The flip side is, I wonder if this could be scaled down to a | home device for processing plastics. It doesn't even have to | produce graphene. | emteycz wrote: | Where do you live that compost is less available than | graphene? I'd love to move there, it's a wonder material that | seems close to magic and I'd love to use it for my tech | products. Where I live, there are absolutely zero risks | whatsoever of running out of compost even if we converted | _all_ disposed food to graphene - but were very much lacking | graphene, especially of the cheap and large scale variety. | turnerc wrote: | [2020] | | Ben from NightHawkInLight has a good "DIY" video on this: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Et8FEbCuCs | trhway wrote: | there is even a similar DIY, only using microwave generated | flash, on producing a [very small] artificial diamond from | graphite by what basically is CVD method | https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Make-a-Synthetic-Diamon... | which most probably would work for any source of carbon (the | people who don't like the low tech look of it may google for | respected scientific labs doing similar :) | hosh wrote: | I got mixed feelings about this. Food waste is valuable as | compost and can be put back into the carbon cycle, and I think | that is far more valuable than graphene in terms of ecology, | rather than the market. | | Plastic, on the other hand, just sits there and we have not been | able to put it back into the carbon cycle. Turning them into an | advanced material like graphene is great. | Retric wrote: | Climate change is all about excess carbon, it ultimately | doesn't matter where it's coming from. | betwixthewires wrote: | There's an easy way to put plastic back into the carbon cycle: | burn it. | janj wrote: | Food waste ending up in the landfill is bad, produces large | amounts of methane. I imagine there will always be streams of | food waste that need to be diverted out of the landfill. In CA | you're no longer allowed to throw food waste in the trash bin, | it must be composted. I don't think that option is available | everywhere. Having a variety of options should help divert food | from ending up in a landfill. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-02 23:00 UTC)