E-Thesis 150 views
The carbon footprint of carbon nanomaterials made from waste carbon and plastic / LEO POINTEAUX
Swansea University Author: LEO POINTEAUX
Abstract
The work carried out during this MSc year focuses on the life cycle analysis of the carbon nanotube manufacturing processes of the company Trimtabs using the Simapro software. Trimtabs is working on the scaling up of laboratory chemical solutions. They want to understand the carbon footprint of thei...
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Swansea, Wales, UK
2023
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| Institution: | Swansea University |
| Degree level: | Master of Research |
| Degree name: | MSc by Research |
| Supervisor: | Davies, Matthew., Orbaek White, Alvin. and Charles, Rhys |
| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa63709 |
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| Abstract: |
The work carried out during this MSc year focuses on the life cycle analysis of the carbon nanotube manufacturing processes of the company Trimtabs using the Simapro software. Trimtabs is working on the scaling up of laboratory chemical solutions. They want to understand the carbon footprint of their processes, so that they know where the greatest carbon footprint savings can be made. It is in this context that several life cycle assessments have been carried out.A focus was placed on the use phase of carbon nanotubes, which were compared to the use of copper electrical cable in aircraft. Among other things, it was shown that the lightening of carbon nanotube cables would reduce the environmental impact of an aircraft during its lifetime.Literary research on similar manufacturing processes of carbon nanotubes has been done. With the results of these research, it has been possible to compare the environmental impacts of the processes proposed by Trimtabs with the one present in the literature.Trimtabs also uses plastic waste as a source of carbon to produce carbon nanotubes. In this case, a comparison of the environmental impacts of these plastics used in this process compared to a more common end-of-life scenarios have been done.Finally, although Trimtabs is currently only producing carbon nanotubes on a laboratory scale, a study of the industrial scale of the process has been carried out. These analyses showed that the company could expect a 90% reduction in overall environmental impacts if it transitioned to more optimised large-scale production. |
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| Keywords: |
Carbon footprint, Carbon nanomaterials, Carbon nanotubes, Waste carbon and plastics, Life cycle assessment, Energy, Chemical vapor deposition, Scale-up projection, CO2 equivalent emissions |
| College: |
Faculty of Science and Engineering |