Fullerenes, a new form of carbon with structures similar to those of a soccer ball, were first produced in late 1990. Because of their unique properties, many promising applications have been suggested; however, no matter how interesting their properties, development of the potential of fullerenes requires that large quantities be available at a relatively low price. Although the currently conventional carbon-arc production method is simple to build and run at the laboratory scale, it is an inherently small-scale batch process, difficult to scale up, energy intensive, and very expensive. TDA is therefore pursuing a combustion synthesis process as an approach to produce large quantities of low-cost fullerenes. Combustion processes are continuous, easy to scale up, allow fine control of time-temperature history (important for optimization of product yield), have low capital costs, and use inexpensive hyrocarbon fuels as raw materials. TDA has successfully isolated fullerenes from combustion soot and has developed thermodynamic models to predict the dependence of product yield on operating conditions which will be utilized in the experimental program to be carried out. In the first phase of this program, TDA will investigate the effects of temperature, pressure, equivalence ratio, and input fuel composition in order to optimize the yield of fullerenes, and will use these data to analyze design and economics for the combustion route to fullerenes. Although fullerenes have been available for less than a year, many applications of this unique class of materials have been suggested. For these applications, a low-cost source of large quantities of product are required. Combustion processes are a preferred route due to relatively low energy requirements and their amenability to scaleup. Major interest in this program has been expressed by chemical manufacturers.
