Revisiting How Carbon Nanotubes Will Change Renewable Energy

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[nolan]

Graphene wires as a copper alternative would be a huge breakthrough. These steps bringing us closer to carbon based electronics will open up so many new avenues.

[DirtyTesla]

Tried using CNT almost 10 years ago for antigen detection. Attach antibodies to CNT, measure conductance. Run sample through CNT solution. Measure conductance again. If it changed, antigen was detected. Project didn't move very far though.

They were a bit scary to work with as they were incredibly fine and you had to be careful not to breath them in ala asbestos :S

[dougvalmore]

"hollow grail" - nice! This (much like Fusion power) has been 5 years away for decades. But materials science has been making amazing strides faster & faster - much hope for the future!

[Hooyahfish]

I’ve literally been waiting for graphene to take over the world for 12 years. Excuse me if I’m not more excited.

Bring on the graphene revolution already!

[jeremylaplace]

I really hope that this tech takes off. I'm building fuel cell based micro grids and have been wrestling with what to do with the waste heat for a while

[timothyhickox]

This reminds me of all the decades of development that went into flat-screen technology (to replace CRTs). We take thin, flat screens for granted today and forget that getting these things into production was a massive achievement. I design IC engines, and any practical way to could utilize some of the waste heat would be a great step forward. Of course, the applications of this tech seem limitless.

[ferfromla]

The work being done on CNT is of great significance. It will take time, but sooner or later, a team of brilliant scientists will find a way to scale up production so that it can be used by all of us. Of particular interest to me is their role in making solar panels highly efficient. I encourage you to keep us all informed on developments in this space. Thanks for the video. I found the information fascinating.

[cmw]

Nanotechnology as a whole has been under the radar for years after being hyped in the 90s. Good to see some news on the graphene tube front at least.

[DougalNorges]

Extremely interesting, thanks Matt. The beginning hit the nail on the head, can this be industrialized, or will it only ever be created in university labs. As with many technologies you cover, if it scales up, this could be extremely interesting.

[Srfingfreak]

Hi, Nanotube researcher here (Papers and Patents).

1) NOT Biocompatible. Bio-killscellsbypokingthemdirectly, the opposite.
2) Heat manipulation is something nanotubes are GREAT at due to their lots and lots of inter-atomic bonding being able to pick up thermal energy. Also their bulk composites typically have incredibly high surface areas and wonderful albedos
3) Note - on the "flow of electrons" - don't forget that really you're just propagating more energetic EMF wave fronts, not electrons themselves. That's WHY the thermoelectric effect work - otherwise you'd run out of electrons in the nanotubes!
4) Doping Nanotubes is super awesome because basically any time you "tickle" the thing you dope the nanotube with, you propagate an EMF wavefront into the nanotube that can be captured as energy. Cl for chemical stuff, TiO2 for solar, bio-things for bio-sensors, etc...
5) One nifty way to isolate sizes/chiralities of CNT is to make an emulsion with a surfactant, then do a foam separation/settling operation. The different sizes/chiralities of nanotubes bond to the surfactant differently and therefore create different "molecular" densities of suspended particles.

Overall this is one of the best CNT videos I've seen on YouTube yet, great work!

[bartroberts]

Pane glass had similar difficulties with commercialization. We can hope graphene has similar successes; though faster than the millennia it took glass would be nice.

[TheDarazsweb]

Very good unbiased review. I am using so called graphene lithium polymer batteries in high current applications, discharge in 7-8 minutes. I had big expectations for the high price. At the very beginning they had lower internal resistance than average lipo batteries, what was enough to increase the usable runtime by 25%. In the long time (50-60 cycles) they are same as any other lipo, loosing capacity and increasing internal resistance until getting unusable after 100 cycles.

[clavo]

What an honor to have Matt ask you, "What do you think?" It's a mushroom cloud of thought Matt! Geesh the possibilities are endless. How many hobbled soldiers and laypeople would love to add meaning to their lives by contributing to such endeavors of the mechanical and chemical and electrical aspects and developmental parameters of innovating around CNTs and graphene in general? The opportunity is staring us in the face yet the conflict of financial interests between the educational industrial University sponsors of this education and the general public will hold us back. The mass production is solved within weeks of educating the important part of our age demographic from 14 to 75 years of age. Retired chemists and electrical engineers and mechanics hold a ton of accessible knowledge and wisdom.

[ManyHeavens]

I said it first two years ago that was revolutionized the world and robotics
But your a man after my own heart, birds of a feather !!!!

[kaitlyn__L]

Even just the power cables present a large opportunity without being strictly speaking technologically revolutionary. Not having to mine-up copper, aluminium, etc to make power lines and being able to use carbon instead would have a huge sustainability boost. Especially since Direct Air Carbon Capture is much more economically viable as an industrial carbon source, rather than operating them as a charity to sequester. “We pulled your power lines from thin air” could be an advertising slogan for the first company to do this.

[davestagner]

My favorite application for carbon nanotubes for renewable energy so far has been Prometheus Fuels. Their tech is pretty straightforward, really… catalyze alcohol from carbonic acid (carbonated water, easy to make with just a waterfall and a fan), separate the alcohol from the water, and then use a zeolite catalyst to convert the alcohol into gasoline and jet fuel. Their “secret sauce’” is a carbon nanotube filter that separates alcohol from water - essentially, hi tech reverse osmosis. This gets away from the high temperatures and pressures (and massive energy consumption) of distillation. Their whole system is room temperature, plumbed with ordinary PVC and rubber gaskets. It’s around 50% efficient at synthesizing gasoline from atmospheric CO2, and can be powered by solar electricity because it doesn’t need to run 24/7 like a distillation plant. And it’s working tech… they’re well funded and working on scaling, not just doing lab experiments. This is especially cool because it offers a path to clean operation of long-lived combustion engines like jets and trucks.

[lucidmoses]

Always good to get an over all update. I've not been following it regularly as I feel it's one of those amazing developments that's somewhere between 1 to 1000 years away.

[Real_MisterSir]

The thing people tend to overlook is that carbon nanotubes (and graphene as a whole by extension) was never overhyped. The actual issue is that too many people expected to see the full scope of said hype material happen instantly. It's not the fault of the technology's potential, but rather the limitation of bringing it out of the labs at a pace that was high enough to meet people's hungry demand for new age tech progression.

But if we look at the raw stats, graphene and carbon nanotubes have seen not just a steady climb, but an exponential one. 2 decades ago, they were still lab theories. 15 years ago, the theory was once and for all proven to be true. And just less than a decade later, the research industry specializing in graphene saw global multi-billion dollar funding from multi-nation government agencies. And less than a decade ago it started to see actual commercial use for the first time.
And the key point here is, that not at any point has the development for the technology been stagnant. It has never plateaued - clearly indicating that there is indeed a strong future for it. It just goes to show that the main aspect holding the technology back, is still simply the economic side of upscaling production - which is the state we are in. Once production reaches a point where it becomes commercially viable for multiple industries to tech into it, THAT is when the hype actually starts to see some of it's promises come true. Real innovation typically only comes after a technology has proven commercially stable, and we are getting closer and closer to that break point.

[MarcoGPUtuber]

0:15 For a speedy transition to a carbon-free future, we must use more carbon. :D

[joelt]

Material properties of carbon nano tubes have significant promise for numerous technologies and industries, not just "green". Being more efficient, more durable, stronger, etc is a key for all engineering projects. This means things can be scaled, which allows functions that were previously economical to be economical. Obsessing over "green" that is merely a byproduct of this, ignores the human progress that is actually made.