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Fossil Fuel Strikes Again

18 June 2022
Physics

Fossil fuels are used to  make all kinds of things from mobile phones to medicines, plastics, tents, clothes and synthetic fibres, amongst a lot of other everyday products. It is not all about plastic bags or plastic straws. We now have people buying bags made from thicker plastic as they last longer, and cardboard straws that bend when you don’t want them to. It seems that it is all about virtue signalling to their mates, and anyone else bothered to read tweets from the twitterati. At https://phys.org/news/2022-06-electric-petroleum-coke-sustainable-graphene.html …  graphene is the new wonder product that finds its way into mobile phones and a variety of other products. Petroleum coke on the other hand is a byproduct of refining crude oil. Scientists have found a sustainable way to make use of this waste product. They have converted petroleum coke into graphene. Graphene is described as a nano material with applications in electronics and supercomputers, and surprisingly, in energy storage [among other uses that will emerge at a later date]. Seems like fossil fuels have their uses after all. Not only that but when graphene is used for energy storage this primarily means solar and wind. Are they now going to demonise graphene – or is that an ambition too far?

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