CC, I really do <spock eyebrow>, in real life, so I'm throwing one at you, here.
High purity is the most important variable with respect to graphite value, bar none. In fact, the value is exponential on purity.
I used to work in a lab which required high purity metals. Each N (nine) brought approximately a 30-fold increase in price, over the last increment in price. 8N (99.999999%) purity was roughly 1000 times the cost of 6N (99.9999%), i.e 30 squared, more or less.
The multiplier might not be the same for graphite, but it is an exponential value relationship for each N.
We might think that 8N is extraordinarily pure, but you have to consider Avagadro's number. A mole of any substance (the gram molecular weight) contains 6.022 X 10^23 atoms. 8N means you can knock 10^8 off that 10^23, so there are still 6 X 10^15 atoms of other stuff present in one mole. For carbon, 12.01 grams at 8N purity contain 6,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of other stuff. And it also matters specifically what those other atoms are, but that's a separate issue with respect to purity.
For ZEN, getting to 4N purity without really even trying hard, is huge. I can hardly wait until they optimize the purification method. For comparison, look at e.g NGC, with 96% in their PEA. 4,000 times the impurities. That's the way to understand purity, in the sense of proportional impurities.
Lar |
