Plasma process makes carbon particles

By David Shaw, ERJ staff

Atlantic Hydrogen has developed a new way of making carbon black -- or something that might at some point resemble carbon black.

The company was originally set up to make hydrogen for fuel cells,using a plasma process to separate hydrogen from methane, producing carbon as a by-product. However, the fuel cell economy has not taken off as quickly as some predicted, so AH is now looking at a material called hydrogen-enriched natural gas, in which methane is mixed with the hydrogen produced by the process. This fuel can be used to generate more energy with a lower carbon cost than ordinary methane.

Now, however, following, the company has realised that the carbon by-product has a value, and perhaps even a greater value than the hydrogen.

The idea stems from an encounter with Columbian Chemicals, which brought their head of R&D into contact with the AH team. AH was interested in hydrogen, and saw the carbon as a waste product, but Columbian knew about carbon and realised that there might be more to the waste than AH realised.

Early in 2009 AH gave some of its carbon to Dr. Felipe Chibante, holder of the Richard J. Currie Chair in Nanotechnology at the University of New Brunswick to characterise, and his team discovered that the material is composed of graphenes and other structures which are currently highly sought after by the nano technology community, in particular, the electronics community.

Currently, said Dr Tom Whidden at Atlantic Hydrogen, the plasma process has been optimised purely to extract hydrogen, but the company is now looking at how it might be optimised to produce carbon.

In addition, the company has just begun a process to assess the potential for using carbon in various high-tech applications. Ultimately, said the company, it would not rule out the use of the material in the rubber industry, but it is more likely to find applications in areas where its special properties and unique nature can be fully utilised.

AH said it expects to have the results of this research in about a year -- by early 2010.

In 1997 Kvaerner set up a process in Montreal to make carbon black from methane using a plasma torch process.

Whidden said the AH process is completely different from that developed by Kvaerner. The Kvaerner reactor closed only a couple of years after it opened.