Summary

A UK company has developed a graphene enhanced eco-friendly concrete additive – reducing CO2 emissions, whilst increasing other key properties such as mechanical strength, water permeability and crack resistance. The company is looking for a commercial agreement with an application company, with technical assistance being offered to ensure the product is added and dispersed correctly and/or a license agreement with an application company that already has graphene knowledge and know how.

Description

An advanced materials company from the United Kingdom specialising in R&D (hubs within the Universities of Manchester & Cambridge) and production of graphene. With support from the UK Government, the company is scaling up technologies where graphene offers enhanced properties such as: improved strength, light weighting, water permeability, and electrical and thermal conductivity, whilst also offering the potential to help reduce CO2 emissions.

With a UK headquarters, the company manufactures graphene powders, inks and high-quality mono-layer CVD (chemical vapour deposition) graphene for applications in many sectors (e.g. from automotive and aerospace, through to electronics and textiles). The company has already expanded production and R&D capability and capacity into Spain and Korea, with offices also operating in the USA and China.

Amongst the many technologies the company has and are developing, graphene enhanced concrete is one which currently takes centre stage. This is because concrete equates for around 8% of the world's carbon emissions; this technology can already reduce raw materials (such as cement) by up to 40%, and can then also offer further incredible properties such as enhanced strength and water permeability qualities, whilst helping to considerably reduce CO2 emissions. The technology is currently at stage TRL 8.

The graphene enhanced concrete (and asphalt) technology goals are as follows:

- To promote efficiency and safety during production, installation and in service

- To extend longevity and durability of structure/materials, which includes: resistance to water permeability, freeze-thaw, rutting, cracking and material loss

- To encourage recycling (and multiple recycle-ability) and use of secondary materials

- To improve mechanical performance in specialist applications;

- To extend sustainability and durability of the pavement structure/materials

- To also make the asphalt less prone to softening in warm and hardening in cold temperatures

- To reduce road wear-tear under heavy loads by increasing the elasticity; and eventually

- To deploy smart sensors across road surface for monitoring and data collection purposes.

By collaborating with in-country experts, an international partnership would provide the company with access to other markets, it would also showcase their technology to help provide advanced materials solutions being sought by construction consultants. With all Government’s now concentrating on their CO2 emission targets, their technologies also provide answers to the topical and important sustainability questions and issues; therefore, the company would be happy to talk further about all types of deal structures: from technology licensing, through to physically setting up production facilities to meet demand. 

The company is looking for opportunities to work with application companies in all countries, under a commercial agreement with technical assistance, or under a license agreement, Partners will be using concrete within the construction sector and will benefit from the introduction of graphene within their product portfolio; The UK company is also open to working within a national project consortium where their expertise would be critical. 

Partner sought

The company seeks partners from concrete manufacturing business or industrial partners – those at the start of the supply chain who produce the concrete; also- construction consultancies who are looking at sustainability as a prime concern/prerequisite within their initial building requirements. They would be keen to work with those partners on a demonstrator using their products to ensure that the graphene additive works, before then agreeing a commercial deal, either by providing the additive (and technical support), by way of expanding production into the country in question, or by licensing the technology to the partner to manufacture themselves. They believe that partners having conversations with their Government departments involved in national construction projects would be advantageous, given that this is already happening positively in other countries, as this technology is being promoted as a primary opportunity to contribute to each country’s overall carbon footprint reduction goals.