Nano-carbon out of ‘waste’ coconut byproduct Ateneo professor, student produce carbon from glycerol

MANILA, Philippines - Previously, glycerol was only a popular solvent in most pharmaceuticals. According to Ateneo professor Dr. Erwin Enriquez and his student Jerick Imbao, it may be the newest source of carbon in the country today.

Enriquez and Imbao found a process that produces carbon from glycerol, a liquid byproduct of the biodiesel and coconut oil industry. Glycerol naturally evaporates or decomposes upon heating and carbon is produced from a solid material.

Entitled “A Method of Producing Carbon from Glycerol,” their research developed a simple process to carbonize glycerol in high yields. This process also has lower energy required to carbonize the glycerol compared with the relatively higher temperature needed for the usual method of producing activated carbon from solid biomass.

This won the 2012 Alfredo M. Yao Intellectual Property Award for Luzon and National Capital Region last Oct. 11.

“It was sort of a crazy idea because glycerol is a liquid and when you heat it, it will boil and evaporate. No one actually is doing it,” Enriquez said.

The project started as early as 2001 when there was a call from the coconut oil industry to find ways of using something which is considered a low-value byproduct of the industry. Back then, the biodiesel industry was not yet fully developed.

Since the Philippines has an abundant source of coconuts, the breakthrough research sees a socio-economic impact on the farmers and the coconut industry because its byproduct — glycerol — will be used for something else.

“Up to 10 percent is produced as crude glycerol byproduct. This is roughly 60 million liters of crude glycerol produced annually. Since crude glycerol contains a lot of impurities, biodiesel producers prefer to dispose of it at a certain cost so it is considered to have a negative value,” Enriquez said. Their research estimates potentially 75,000 tons of carbon using crude glycerol as a starting material, which can have a market value of roughly $75 million.

Carbon applications

The Philippines usually produces activated carbon (or activated charcoal) from coconut shells. Carbon exists in many forms such as diamond, graphite, and others. 

As a black solid in the form of activated carbon, it has a wide variety of uses such as air treatment, cigarette filters, deodorization, gas purification, cabin filter, fruit and flower preservation, and water purification.

By 2017, the global market for activated carbon is estimated to reach the size of 2.3 million metric tons. The Philippines is one of the top producers of activated carbon in the Asia-Pacific region.

The most recent form of carbon that was newly discovered is graphene — a planar sheet of carbon atoms that is highly conducting. Graphene is touted as a replacement for silicon as the main component for future electronic device. 

“Now we have discovered that we can carbonize glycerol and we have evidence that we can see graphene-like structures in these samples,” Enriquez said. 

Graphene, considered as the thinnest but strongest form of carbon, won the 2010 Nobel Prize winner for Physics for its discoverers.

According to Nobelprize.org, graphene transistors are estimated to be faster than today’s silicon transistors.

Ateneo is currently interested in carbon for applications in energy storage and use in third-generation solar cell devices.

The research of Enriquez and Imbao will apply for a patent soon. Part of this research has been accepted for presentation at the Symposium on Carbon  Nanomaterials at the Fall Meeting of the Materials Research Society in Boston this November, and will also be sent out for formal publication in a scientific journal. The research project is funded by the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development of the Department of Science and Technology.