A Full Scale Carbon Nanotube Plant Planned For Texas

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Pasadena, Texas has been selected as the site location to build a full-scale buckytube (single wall carbon nanotube) (SWNT) plant for Carbon Nanotechnologies, Incorporated (CNI) (Houston, Texas). The new plant will produce between 150 to 300 tons per year of SWNT's, utilizing the gas-phase process.

Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) (Houston, Texas) engineered and constructed CNI's pilot plant at the KBR technology center in Houston, Texas for the testing and production of buckytubes. The full-scale plant will be engineered in house and some assistance may be provided by KBR. A general contractor will be selected by the end of the year to construct the plant scheduled to begin in March 2004.

See related article Texas Firm Develops Technology for Producing Carbon Nanotubes.

CNI, the leader in SWNT production and technology was founded in 2000, and uses fullerene based technology that started in 1985 when Professor Richard Smalley discovered buckyballs. The new plant will use the technology referred to as Buckytubes which are fullerenes described as perfect, hollow, microscopic molecules of pure carbon that are linked together that form the strongest, stiffest toughest fiber existing in the world.

The steel like fibers are lightweight and because of their unique tubular structure and length versus diameter ratio, they have exceptional mechanical and electrical properties. SWNT's common applications are high performance electronics, electromagnetic interference shielding, flat panel displays and novel composite materials. Engineers and NASA are also vigorously studying combining SWNT's with lightweight polymers to produce durable composite materials that one day may be used on future spacecraft.