First in and best dressed
GRAPHENE is quickly gaining a reputation as an impressive nanomaterial, 200 times stronger than steel and the foremost electrical and thermal conductor, it promises to revolutionise the performance of any material it’s added to.
That could be why First Graphene director Warwick Grigor is enthusiastic about the company’s ability to supply high-performing graphene products.
“Our business strategy is to be the most reliable supplier of high quality graphene, fit for purpose for delivery to industry,” Mr Grigor told investors at the recent Noosa Mining Conference in Queensland.
“First Graphene is the only company that can legally sell graphene in Australia according to federal regulations.
“There are about 22 companies and organisations who are offering graphene products but they are doing so illegally.”
The National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS) is the federal government agency that approves graphene sales, which First Graphene secured in May of this year, opening the door for its first commercial shipment on July 15.
With a range of applications in the mining industry, Mr Grigor said customers are already knocking on the doors.
“The first three customers that we picked up actually came through our doors saying we heard you can make graphene, can you show us how it works and can you give us assured supply? And we said yes we can.”
“There was pent up demand. There was a frustrated industry out there wanting to get into business and we’ve solved their problems.”
The company’s first customer specialises in wear liners for mining industry, which go inside mining buckets and shovels, to protect the steal from abrasion and wear.
Mr Grigor said standard maintenance for RIO, BHP and Fortescue is to replace these every six months.
“What we’ve found with our test work is that the abrasion resistance improves between 100-500pc and the tensile strength improved by about 30-40pc.
“We’re not too sure yet if this will extend maintenance to 9 months, 12 months, 24 months, but we know it’s going to be a lot better.”
Mr Grigor said the company has found graphene actually has some unexpected improvements for different applications, particularly fire retardancy.
“Over the past few years RIO, BHP and Fortescue have all had fires in their plants,” he said.
“In the first quarter of this year RIO lost 40mt of production because of fires.
“When you add 1pc graphene to the polymer, the oxygen levels needed for the fire to propagate increases from 21pc (our atmospheric oxygen levels) to 31pc.
“RIO is pretty excited about this both for the fire retardancy factor and the wear resistance factor.”
“We expect a lot of growth from that. First Graphene uses its own proprietary single-step, high-yield electrochemical exfoliation process to produce graphene from graphite with an ore purity of over 90pc, which is extracted from the Sri Lankan mines owned by the company.