In response to recent demand increases caused by emerging technologies, the European Comission (EC) established the Raw Materials Initiative to limit the impact that material supply shortages may have on the European economy. In the study released by EC assessing materials in critical demand, natural graphite was identified as exhibiting a high supply risk and a high economic importance (figure above).
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/growth/sites/growth/files/critical-importance-risk.jpg
Therefore, CHARPHITE project aims to demonstrate the technical feasibility to utilize fresh and reclaimed landfilled CHAR (carbonaceous solid residue) derived from fly ash and bottom ash as a substitute for graphite-based materials in green energy applications. It will be utilized innovative methods/techniques to develop recovery processes and transform CHAR from coal ash into high-grade, high-value material with various applications, creating the possibility for the substitution of natural graphite. The project expects to achieve results to be used as an initial basis for advanced, waste-less and environmentally safety utilisation of various coal combustion ashes to obtain char concentrates, and to use them as precursor material to produce exfoliated heteroatom-doped products and composites with metal oxides, for the applications as catalysts in electro-assisted reactions for sustainable energy production.
On the other hand it will be made the assessment of natural graphite occurrences and sampling in the consortium countries for the characterization of their technologic properties, for comparison with CHARS and graphitized CHARS produced under the project main objectives. The output would be an assessment of the viability of future work including those natural graphites or the protection for the future generations by the substitution with the CHAR graphite product.