Central Florida Company Garmor Achieves Graphene Production Milestone
Orlando-based Garmor Inc.– a leading manufacturer of high quality graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide flakes – has successfully increased single-machine production of graphene oxide to 20 tons per year to meet the demands of commodity-type applications. This scale-up effort designed and validated an automated, turn-key system that produces graphene oxide and water as its only by-product.
The technology facilitates the rapid increase in manufacturing capacity and presents an ideal method for producing graphene oxide at customer sites. While the applications for these materials are diverse, Garmor has targeted high-volume markets that require commodity-type prices. Examples range from using graphene oxide as an additive for cement to enhance mechanical properties to using graphene in plastics to improve mechanical and electrical performance.
“For commodity-type markets, pricing pressures are significant and Garmor has designed a production technique that eliminates costly reactants & hazardous waste costs,” states Garmor CEO Anastasia Canavan. “Since the tool itself can be located at the customer site, transportation costs of the final product can also be eliminated. Work continues to focus on increasing the per-machine production capacity towards 100 metric tons per year.”
Richard Blair, a researcher at the University of Central Florida College of Sciences and the Center for Advanced Turbine and Energy Research, developed the method of producing graphene in large volume and at lower cost. This technique was then licensed by the Office of Technology Transfer to Garmor Inc.