Craig Nicol, Founder and CEO, Graphene Manufacturing Group Ltd.
Craig Nicol is the Founder and CEO of Graphene Manufacturing Group Ltd.
Mr. Nicol has a career of over 20 years in delivering large-scale innovation including leading multi-billion-dollar gas and LNG value chains in Australia and Asia Pacific and managing sales and marketing teams across Asia Pacific working for Shell International.
Mr. Nicol has a bachelor of engineering degree in manufacturing systems (Honors) and a bachelor’s degree in business marketing from the Queensland University of Technology.
Mr. Nicol is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) and is also the Chair of the Australian Graphene Industry Association (AGIA).
“The first product is a coating which is just being sold around the world and we’re waiting on an EPA approval for the American market.
The graphene coating provides greater heat transfer and also very long corrosion resistance.
One of the longest corrosion resistant coatings in the world.
So generally, we target air conditioning coils, LNG plants, and now electronic products to remove heat.
We can substantially change the heat signature of computers and phones and electronics with that.
And we’re talking to many large manufacturers about that.
The second product is a graphene lubricant.
That is a small dosage amount of graphene in oil which then reduces your friction in your engine, which then reduces your fuel use.
We have been testing this product for some time; it’s fully developed, but we’re just doing final testing.
We’ve been testing this product for about a year and a half and we aim to come out with an update on that shortly.
Generally, we see about 5% to 10% savings in fuel with a very small amount of our product blended in with a very economic price.
So, it’s quite a big opportunity for very large fuel burning companies.
The third product, which we just launched recently, is called SUPER G.
SUPER G is a graphene additive which can go into lithium-ion batteries.
They’re in small doses to increase what is called their rate tolerance, which means they can charge faster.
We’ve been making this product for a number of years and it’s actually half of our fourth product, which is called the graphene aluminium-ion battery or aluminum-ion battery.
Now that is the one that most people want to come and talk to us about.
We’re developing an aluminium-ion battery technology internally with University of Queensland, who invented this particular battery and we have a patent and license around that.”
Air conditioning seems prosaic but in a time when everyone is building data centers, it becomes a growth trajectory for graphene products that expedite the data center process flow.
“…We have a coating which has now been in development for six years that has been proven to make air conditioners more efficient just by spraying the coating on the outside of the air conditioning coil, and then it also makes heat sinks more efficient.
Heat sinks are basically the device that you have in your computers and your electronics just to remove heat so electronics can work at an OK temperature.
And in our model, which is signed off by University of Queensland we can show a 39% reduction in size when our coating is applied, which is a massive reduction in weight and volume for the heat sink.
Or you can keep the same size of the heat sink when you apply our coating and you can instead increase its performance so you can push more heat through, which is what a lot of companies want to do now.
So that’s now we’re working with 15 to 20 large manufacturers globally, all very much leaders in their field.
Generally, America and China are where our manufacturing customers are, and we’re working with them.
Some of them have already got products tested and approved.
Now they’re going into manufacturing testing which is the final stages of testing.
Now we’re obviously keen to see that push forward into significant revenue.
So that’ll be good for us, and then to be able to show that this product can really be in many different sectors.
We recently got the product of the year award for the Australian industry for air conditioning, which is quite a prestigious award.
And then we also got a number of awards in the global data center industry where we’re doing a lot of work with data centers to reduce their energy costs in different locations around the world.
So, there are many applications, but we’re leading with air conditioning.
But I think electronics are probably going to come up faster and probably take over in terms of volume because the amount of interest we’re getting is really quite extraordinary.”
There is an EPA regulatory hurdle in the US, which may or may not be affected by current Federal budget cuts.
“…We make this graphene material, which as I said is a new material.
It’s basically carbon.
It’s what’s called carbon allotrope or carbon material.
There are four types of carbon.
There’s diamonds, there’s coal, there’s graphite and graphene.
The graphene is the fourth type, and the others are all quite commonly used.
And graphene, it has basically got all the same properties.
It’s the mother structure of life.
However, it’s a new material.
So, it’s got to go through all of the safety and environmental approvals.
We already have them in place for Australia to help produce and sell here.
And we went through the pretty rigorous nanomaterial laws to do that.
We already can sell into Europe, Canada, China, Mexico, many countries.
Pretty much every country in the world we want to, except America.
So, we’ve already got a partner for distribution in America called Nu-Calgon.
We’ve already launched that with them and they’re one of the largest air conditioning chemical distribution companies in America based in St. Louis, Missouri.
So, what we had done is submit an approval for 10 tonnes about a year and a half ago for the graphene coating, which would have been plenty because there’s very little graphene used in the coating.
And we submitted it as per requirement and then the EPA basically asked us to resubmit, but with an unlimited amount which would suit their regulations better.
So, we had to resubmit and that’s taken us almost a year to be able to put in a different form to resubmit.
And we’ve just done that.
We’re going through the EPA review of that right now.
It’s quite an involved process.
But what that means is we’ll have pretty much an unlimited volume into almost any market.
We’re waiting for that to come in for revenue because then we can then kickstart a revenue with Nu-Calgon and into America.”
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