Fullerenes: C60, C70 & Custom Derivatives

Fullerenes: C60, C70 and Custom Derivatives

Klean Graphene produces fullerenes — including a C60-rich nano mix, high-purity Nanom purple C60 and the exclusive Nano black grade — from waste tires and scrap rubber.

Fullerenes are the closed-cage members of the carbon family: C60, C70 and the higher-order cages above them. They behave unlike any other carbon in solution chemistry, electron transfer and radical capture, which is why they keep surfacing in energy, electronics, coatings and medical research long after the initial excitement of their discovery faded.

The grade range

• Nano mix — approximately 60% C60x and 25% C70x, with the remainder higher-order fullerenes. The workhorse grade where cage distribution is tolerable and volume matters.
• Nanom purple — the high-purity C60 grade, for work that needs the single cage rather than a mixture.
• Nano black — an exclusive Klean grade.
• Custom fullerene derivatives — functionalised chemistries developed to a customer’s requirement.

Purification is the differentiator

Making fullerenes is comparatively easy; separating and purifying them to a usable specification is not. Klean’s position here comes from a long collaboration with Mitsubishi Corporation on carbonisation and on fullerene synthesis and purification, running from the late 1980s through the 1990s. The derivative work builds directly on that purification capability — you cannot functionalise a cage you cannot isolate.

From pilot to plant

The joint pilot facility in Japan began production in 2000 at 0.4 tonnes per annum, then scaled to process approximately 2,500,000 used tires — roughly 20,000 tonnes of rubber annually. The same integrated platform delivers about 7,000 tonnes per annum of nano-recovered carbon black and 700 tonnes per annum of carbon nanotubes at full scale.

Application areas

Fullerene and nanocarbon work currently spans batteries, supercapacitors, coatings, aerospace, construction, electronics and medicine. Purity envelopes, cage distributions, solubility behaviour, derivative options and pricing are released on application-specific request — because the right answer for a photovoltaic layer is not the right answer for a lubricant additive or a medical study.