A Continuous Reactor for the Large Scale Production of Nanotubes

"The Phase I effort made significant headway in the understanding of the catalytic formation mechanism of carbon nanotubes (CNT's). Armed with this knowledge a systematic evaluation of potential processes for large-scale CNT production was undertaken. Theevaluation of arc, hot plasma, catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CCVD), and several production approaches determined that CCVD approach hold the highest potential for continuous production of several types of CNT. A CCVD reactor was operatedcontinuously and produced about one kg of high-yield CNT. In Phase II work will include the refinement of the nanotubes formation model developed in Phase I to yield quantitative relationships between reaction conditions and products. The model will beuseful in the design and optimization of a high temperature catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) reactor that will provide extended temperatures for investigations for improvement of nanotubes yields and production rates. The CCVD technique will beadapted to produce single-, double-, and multi-wall carbon nanotubes with high throughput and quality. Possible approaches to produce both bulk nanotubes and nanotubes films will be investigated, to address important application requirements. Theproduction of nanotubes in a flame-based reactor will also be explored as a mean of large economical scale-up process. Procedures for product purification will be automated and applied to the full r