In article ,
says...

On Thursday, September 22, 2016 at 3:05:56 PM UTC+12, Jeff Findley wrote:
In article ,
says...
I mean, you and your like minded friends act as if I couldn't
call up Bayer and buy all the carbon nanotubes I wanted

Actually, I'm not sure you can. Google search of "bayer carbon
nanotubes" gives top search results of 2013 and 2014 articles on the
subject with these titles:

Bayer MaterialScience shuts down carbon nanotubes project ...

Bayer offloads its carbon nanotube and graphene patents to ...

Bayer Exits Highly Hyped Carbon Nanotubes Business

Carbon nanotubes not commercially viable for Bayer - Chemistry World

Bayer Divests Itself From Patents For Carbon Nanotubes And Graphene

Bayer MaterialScience exits carbon nanotube business

Bayer selling carbon nanotube intellectual property to FutureCarbon

Bayer MaterialScience brings Production of Carbon Nanotubes to a Halt



So Mook, do you have a cite which says Bayer is still in the business of
selling "all the carbon nanotubes" any customer wants?

Well, in 2007 you could buy all you wanted from Bayer. They were making 60 tonnes per year.

It's not 2007 Mook. And in 2007, they weren't producing them in
"arbitrarily long lengths". They were really short little things you
could add to other materials. So not really carbon nanotubes like you'd
need say for a space elevator.

Today you can buy CNT from Sigma Aldrich;

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/material...ePage=16376687

Bayer sold their patents and tooling to FutureCarbon, because the owners of FutureCarbon were willing to pay more for the rights than Bayer felt they could make with them in the face of growing Chinese competition.

If you read the annual report on the transaction you will see Bayer made a net gain on the transaction, and FutureCarbon has expanded their rate of production to support their specialty materials using CNTs.

The 2007 article indicates Bayer had a capacity of 60 tonnes per year. This article;

http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=23118.php

Shows that in 2011 global production for CNTs was 3,141 metric tons!

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1322105

In 2016 global production of CNTs and graphene was 3,500 metric tons

So production barely went up between 2011 and 2016. Also, for global
production, that certainly doesn't sound like a lot. Also, graphene
isn't carbon nanotubes, so you're inflating your numbers to make them
look better.

You're the one that said you could buy all you needed from Bayer. You
were wrong. When a large company like Bayer dumps a "promising" new
technology like carbon nanotubes, it's not ready for prime-time. In
2013/2014 when Bayer dumped everything they owned related to carbon
nanotubes (including patents), it wasn't ready for prime time.

Jeff
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