A huge amount of energy is needed to make steel. In electric arc crucibles, scrap steel is melted using a portion of this energy. They reach temperatures up to 3,000°C, which is half that of the Sun's surface. These electrodes, which are used in the production of steel, require graphite for them to be able to handle such temperatures. Graphite contains the required structural properties for such high temperatures. Coal-Pitch Coke is the most common form of graphite used in steel. In the article that follows, we will look at how CPC is produced and then transformed into "graphitizable petroleum coke", also known as GPC.
This is done in special ovens that are devoid of oxygen. They use extreme heat to convert coal into coke. In the process, volatile compounds are removed, and a solid, porous substance known as coke remains. The coke has a carbon content of about 50 percent by volume, and low sulfur and ash levels. This makes it valuable for industries like quality fulan, alloy coatings and cast iron that need low sulfur.
Coke is made from a wide variety of coals and their byproducts. Needle coke is made from coal tar, ethylene-tar, solvent coal, vacuum residues with low sulfur, and petroleum fluidized catalytic decant oil. The carbon in coal tar and the ethylene pitch is arranged in sp2, while the carbon in petroleum fluidized catalytic decant oils has the sp3 configuration. The microstructure of coke is also highly diverse, ranging from a sponge-like morphology in anode grade coke to agglomerates of spherical "shots" in fuel coke.
Coke's unique, layered structure is not only carbon-rich but also low in sulfur. This makes coke an ideal precursor to graphene production. In previous studies, the focus was on increasing graphitic contents of parent materials through ball-milling in stearic acids to create GO10 and graphene derived from coke13. But no previous reports have been made on the potential to generate a high quality, graphene like material directly from coke15,16.
Coke-derived graphene is an exciting discovery because it may open up a new route for the manufacture of value-added nanomaterials, potentially increasing economic benefits from less-than-perfect petroleum cokes17,18. This is also an affordable and abundant alternative to mining and processing naturally occurring graphite. The production of graphene with high quality from coke can also lower the costs associated with steel manufacturing by eliminating expensive imported raw graphite used to manufacture high performance electrodes. Raman spectra for CK-1c/CK-1d show a small 2D peak after exfoliation. This indicates that ECE is able to isolate a sp2 structure. The comparatively low lateral resolution in traditional Raman methods makes this a very significant result. Figure Supplementary Raman spectra for CK-2a CK-2c CK-2d are shown on Fig. 15.
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