Graphene Powered Cooling
CARBON NANOMATERIALS
Graphene, put to work.
Graphene conducts heat better than any bulk material in common use, and its surface chemistry can be rewritten almost at will. This line turns both properties into products: a heat transfer fluid that keeps flakes dispersed inside a working loop, and a route that upgrades renewable biomass into graphene-functionalised material.
01 · THERMAL MANAGEMENT
Graphene heat transfer fluid
Few-layer graphene nanofluid · water or water/glycol base · surfactant-stabilised
APPLICATIONS
A heat transfer fluid is judged on how much heat it carries per litre pumped. Water is cheap and has excellent heat capacity but a modest thermal conductivity of about 0.6 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹, and glycol mixtures are worse. Suspending a small volume fraction of a very high conductivity solid raises the conductivity of the mixture far more than the volume fraction alone would suggest the effect that defines a nanofluid.
Graphene is the strongest candidate for that solid. A single sheet conducts heat in-plane better than copper by an order of magnitude, and its extreme aspect ratio means percolating thermal pathways form at loadings well below one percent by weight. The hard part has never been the flake it is keeping the flake suspended. Untreated graphene is hydrophobic, aggregates within hours, and once it settles it does nothing except abrade a pump.
Tenutec's formulation work sits entirely on that problem. We exfoliate few-layer graphene and functionalise the flake surface so that it is wetted by the base fluid, then pair it with a surfactant and corrosion-inhibitor package matched to the metals in the loop. The result is specified as a working fluid: conductivity uplift stated against the same base fluid, viscosity increase kept inside a pumping-power budget, and a stability figure from a real shelf test rather than a fresh sample.
Fluids are formulated to the customer's base composition, freeze point and wetted materials. Where a loop already runs on a 30/70 glycol mixture, that is what we formulate into.
Indicative specification
Property
Typical value
Base fluid
Graphene loading
deionised water, water/glycol
0.01 – 0.5 wt%
Thermal conductivity uplift
Viscosity increase
Flake lateral size
Operating range
pH
up to +40% vs base fluid
< 10% at working loading
0.5 – 5 µm
−20 °C to +120 °C
7 – 9
Data centre cooling. Direct-to-chip and rear-door loops where rack density has outrun what plain water carries at acceptable pumping power.
EV battery thermal management. Pack coolant circuits holding cells inside a narrow window during fast charge, without adding mass.
Power electronics. Inverters, converters and charging hardware where junction temperature sets the duty cycle.
Industrial heat exchangers. Process loops where a conductivity gain converts into a smaller exchanger or a lower flow rate.
Solar thermal and district heat. Collector and transfer circuits on glycol mixtures, where fluid performance caps the collector.
SELECTED READING
02 · RENEWABLE CARBON
Graphene-functionalised biomass
Graphene coating on cellulose, wood, paper, textile and biochar · dispersion or finished product
Biomass materials are renewable, abundant and cheap, and Sweden has more cellulose and lignin than almost anywhere in Europe. What they are not is functional. Paper, wood, cellulose fibre and textile are electrical insulators, they absorb water, and they burn. Those three facts keep a very large, very sustainable class of material out of applications it would otherwise suit.
A graphene coating changes all three at once. We apply few-layer graphene or graphene oxide to the biomass surface by dip, spray, pad or vacuum-assisted coating, followed by reduction where a conducting film is wanted leaving the substrate's own structure untouched underneath. The fibre keeps its flexibility, strength and low density; the surface gains electrical conductivity, hydrophobicity and a thermally stable char-forming layer.
The advantage over compounding graphene into a bulk composite is efficiency. Conductivity, shielding and barrier behaviour are all surface phenomena, so a coating a few hundred nanometres thick does the work that would otherwise take several weight percent of filler dispersed through the whole material at a fraction of the graphene, without changing the mechanics of the substrate.
Tenutec coats customer-supplied substrates and supply coated material to specification, or supply the coating dispersion formulated for your own line. Coating weight, sheet resistance and adhesion are specified per batch.
APPLICATIONS
Supercapacitor electrodes. Hierarchical porosity from the biomass plus graphene conductivity gives high-rate, compact energy storage.
Battery anodes and current collectors. Renewable hard carbon with an engineered conductive network.
Water treatment and sorption. High surface area with tunable surface chemistry for organic and heavy-metal capture.
Conductive composites. A renewable filler that raises electrical and thermal conductivity in polymer matrices.
Catalyst supports. Defined graphenic surface for metal and single-atom catalyst anchoring.
Thermal interface and EMI shielding. Carbon mats where conductivity and low density both matter.
SELECTED READING