Lightweight materials like carbon fiber got utilized for making similar materials like tennis rackets and mountain bicycles. It combines exceptional strength and low-mass capability. But, these materials are more costly to produce than other manufacturing elements such as steel or aluminum(Al).
Now, M.I.T. researchers have created a way of producing these lightweight carbon fibers from a very cheap stock. The heavy and slimy waste products are leftover from the reactions like petroleum refining. The refineries nowadays supply low-value goods/applications like asphalt and become a waste product.
Not only the latest carbon fiber is cheap, but it also offers various other advantages over the commonly used carbon fiber materials, like having additional compressional strength. Thus, being able to load-bearing uses. The process it is using is described in the Advanced Science Journal.
The research started nearly four years ago as a response for the Department of Energy. It was finding ways to make more efficient cars with less fuel consumption. It may be lowering the overall car weight. If you compare the same car model to a thirty years old one, you find that the older one is relatively heavy. The car weight has an increment of around 15 percent.
Increased car weight requires a bigger engine and powerful brakes. So reducing the bodyweight of one or more components has a rippling effect producing any additional mass savings.
The D.O.E. is helping the development of lightweight carbon fiber materials matching the safety of conventional carbon-steel panels. It also could be cheaply made to potentially alternate steel in standard vehicles.
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