The use of expandable graphite

As a new type of functional carbon material, Expanded Graphite (EG) is a loose and porous wormlike substance obtained from natural graphite flakes through intercalation, water washing, drying, and high-temperature expansion. EG not only possesses excellent properties such as cold and heat resistance, corrosion resistance, and self-lubrication of natural graphite itself, but also has characteristics such as softness, compression resilience, adsorption, ecological environment coordination, biocompatibility, and radiation resistance that natural graphite does not have. As early as the early 1860s, Brodie discovered expanded graphite by heating natural graphite with chemical reagents such as sulfuric acid and nitric acid. However, its application only began a hundred years later. Since then, many countries have successively carried out research and development on expanded graphite, achieving significant scientific breakthroughs.

Expanded graphite is extremely easy to adsorb oils, organic molecules, and hydrophobic substances, and has an irreplaceable effect in water environmental treatment with other substances. When it is used in granular form for oil removal on water surfaces, its dosage is 1 to lo%/rn depending on the size of the oil surface area and the type of oil, and the adsorption time can vary from 15 minutes to several hours.

Expandable graphite can be applied in the following fields:

1. Application of Medical Materials

Medical dressings made of powdered graphite have many excellent properties and can replace most traditional gauze.

2. Application of Military Materials

The pulverization of ultrafine graphite into ultrafine powder has strong scattering and absorption characteristics for infrared waves, making it an excellent infrared shielding material and playing an important role in modern warfare's optoelectronic countermeasures.

3. Application of environmentally friendly materials

Micropowder graphite has the characteristics of low density, non-toxic, pollution-free, easy to handle, and excellent adsorption, making it widely used in the field of environmental protection.

4. Biomedical materials

Carbon materials have excellent compatibility with the human body and are a good biomedical material. As a new type of carbon material, expandable graphite materials have excellent adsorption properties for organic and biological macromolecules, and have good biocompatibility, non-toxic, odorless, and no side effects. They have broad application prospects in biomedical materials.