Sustainable Development Goals
Location and Collaboration:
Confidential advanced-materials developer; Klean Industries
Development Milestone:
Engineered recovered carbon black qualified as graphene feedstock
Project Status:
Feasibility and scale-up in progress
Core Achievement:
An industrial-scale recovered-carbon feedstock for graphene production
Equipment and Services:
Design and Engineering; Due Diligence; Packaged Solutions
Klean Industries has qualified its engineered recovered carbon black (rCB) as a feedstock for the industrial production of graphene, the strongest, lightest, most conductive material ever measured. The result extends the value ladder Klean first set out in its graphite program: recovered carbon worth roughly US$1,500 per metric tonne becomes the input to graphene, the highest-value carbon product Klean has yet pursued.
More importantly, it answers graphene’s twenty-year commercialization failure. The barrier has never been the science; it has been manufacturing enough consistent, affordable material to feed real production — a feedstock-and-scale problem Klean is uniquely positioned to solve, because Klean already controls the carbon supply at the volume industrial graphene has never had access to.
Graphene is a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon: roughly 200 times the strength of steel, about 130 gigapascals in tensile strength, among the most electrically and thermally conductive materials known, with one square metre weighing about 0.77 milligrams. For two decades it has promised lighter structures, longer-lasting batteries, faster electronics and stronger concrete.
It has not industrialized. Most graphene is still manufactured in grams for research laboratories. Commercial manufacturers need tonnes, and demanding industrial programs need repeatable, qualified, industrial-scale supply. The constraint is twofold: most production routes lean on narrow, expensive, refined-graphite feedstocks, and few suppliers can deliver both the volume and the consistent quality that production demands. A promising nanomaterial is not an industrial material until both are solved together.
Klean’s advantage starts with feedstock. Facilities using Klean’s technology, including customer projects, collectively produce, distribute, and sell more than 100,000 metric tonnes of recovered carbon black, creating an industrial-scale supply base with the potential to support graphene manufacturing at volumes few producers could otherwise access.
Klean engineered its recovered carbon black specifically for graphene conversion and tested it: the material has been successfully converted into graphene, qualifying it as a feedstock.
The engineering rests on firm science. Carbon black is a “non-graphitizable” carbon: its graphene-like layers are short, curved and bound together by crosslinks, which is why raw carbon black is not graphene. Peer-reviewed research has shown those crosslinks can be liberated, controlled oxidation preferentially removes the disordered, crosslink-rich material, after which heat treatment lets the freed layers straighten, grow and stack, roughly doubling or tripling in-plane crystallite size and stacking height toward graphene-ready order. That is the preparation Klean applies to its recovered carbon black: not a claim that raw char is graphene, but an engineered feedstock made ready for graphene conversion.
Scale is the core of the program. A single production train produces roughly ten tonnes of graphene per day. The route to industrial volumes is not a bigger single machine, it is running many trains in parallel, and scaling that production reliably is the central engineering and commercial challenge. The program’s initial development target is on the order of 100,000 tonnes of graphene per year. Reaching that rate demands a continuous, consistent, high-volume carbon supply, precisely the recovered carbon Klean already controls at more than 100,000 tonnes per year across its own projects, its operating network in India, and its other partner projects.
Because recovered carbon black is itself derived from end-of-life tires, this route does not depend on mined graphite. It converts a waste stream into the feedstock for one of the most valuable materials on earth.
The commercial logic is the value ladder Klean has already published. Recovered carbon black carries a value of roughly US$1,500 per metric tonne. Klean’s graphite work lifted suitably prepared recovered carbon to US$7,000 in basic battery applications and an estimated US$20,000 in advanced capacitor applications. Graphene is the next rung above graphite — the highest-value end of recovered carbon’s ladder.
The applications are concrete and current. Graphene strengthens concrete admixtures, improving compressive strength, accelerating cure, and sharply reducing freeze-thaw damage, making it a candidate additive for construction materials worldwide. The same material serves advanced composites, coatings, energy storage and electronics.
There is a supply-security dimension too. China controls roughly 90% of the world’s graphite and has restricted exports of the grades used in advanced manufacturing. A graphene route fed by recovered carbon rather than mined graphite is a resilient domestic alternative, the same argument that drove Klean’s graphite program, carried one product further.
For the wider recovered-carbon market, the effect is the one Klean has already identified: as higher-value applications such as graphite and graphene absorb meaningful rCB volumes, less high-quality recovered carbon remains available to commodity buyers, and producers who secure the technology, product quality and customer relationships early will be best placed. This case is at the feasibility stage, qualification is proven in Klean’s testing, while industrial scale-up is being developed and each application’s economics are worked out project-by-project on the specific feedstock, specification and market.
1. Klean’s recovered carbon black is a qualifying graphene feedstock - tested and proven, not theoretical.
Klean produced, engineered, and successfully converted its own recovered carbon into graphene, qualifying the input in hand rather than proposing a concept.
2. The value ladder now runs recovered carbon black → graphite → graphene.
US$1,500-per-tonne recovered carbon black becomes US$7,000–20,000 graphite, and graphene is the next value step above it.
3. Scale is Klean’s moat.
A single graphene train yields about ten tonnes per day; the initial 100,000-tonnes-per-year target means running trains in parallel — and feeding them continuously is a feedstock problem only Klean’s 100,000-plus-tonne recovered-carbon supply can solve.
These are selected achievements and lessons. Further technical and commercial insights are available through an engagement with Klean.
Your recovered carbon may support a higher-value product strategy when the right preparation, upgrading process and end market are developed together. Klean can assess the route from your existing char or rCB to graphene and other advanced carbon products that best fit your material and commercial objectives.
Discuss Your Recovered Carbon to Graphene Project with Klean >> GO.
Tell us your feedstock or carbon source, available analysis, annual volume, location and target product. For a sufficiently defined project, a paid Detailed Equipment Quotation (DEQ) is the appropriate next step, progressing through a Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) and then Front-End Engineering Design (FEED). Proprietary process details and application data are addressed within the agreed engagement and appropriate confidentiality arrangements.
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ABOUT THE INFORMATION PRESENTED
This case study presents selected Klean project achievements and feasibility work using Klean’s project and pilot records. Pilot qualification results and industrial scale-up targets are presented for their engineering and commercial significance; specific yields, specifications, partner identities and customer details are addressed through an authorized engagement and appropriate confidentiality arrangements.
This project addresses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by considering the goals and associated targets illustrated by the WBCSD’s Tire Industry Project (TIP). TIP provides a framework for action that outlines impactful pathways for the tire sector to contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To learn more, please review the report Sustainability Driven: Accelerating Impact with the Tire Sector SDG Roadmap.
