95-61066 Pan This Small Business Innovative Research Phase I project will demonstrate the economic separation/purification of fullerenes (C60, C70) without the use of solvents. Fullerenes, the third form of carbon after graphite and diamond, have ushered in a completely new field of carbon with potential applications in diverse fields such as electronics, medicine, materials, and chemistry. The continued research as well as the pace of large-scale application development are hampered, however, by the high cost (several times the cost of gold) and limited supply of pure and solvent-free fullerenes which are currently separated by liquid chromatography. Residue solvents in the fullerenes are impurities that often significantly interfere with applications of interest. A major contributor to the high cost is the separation/purification cost primarily arising from the difficulty in completely removing the residue solvent. This program will demonstrate a continuous, energy integrated separation method that utilizes the difference in the volatility of C60 and C7O and incorporates a fluidized bed technique into the separation. The results of this program will immediately bolster fullerene research and advance the efforts to develop a commercial manufacturing process for low-cost, pure, and solvent-free fullerenes. Such a commercial process will lead to large scale applications of fullerenes in optics, high temperature superconductivity, catalyst, polymers, medicine, diamond synthesis, and a host of other diverse applications.
