I posted these in another thread earlier. They are more appropriate here. the graphene sheets should make for light-weight sheets of material, if one had, for example, a nano-tube woven cloth laminated between graphene sheets. high-rises should be able to go several miles high if they only weigh 1/10th of conventional construction. girders would be of nanotube cables encased in aerogel-like material. super tensile strength and compression strength, and ultra-light-weight. flooring would be of criss-crossed nanotube cables encased in aerogel; instead of conventional flooring of criss-crossed steel cable encased in concrete. sheetrock would be of aerogel and weigh only a few pounds for 4'X8' sheets, instead of heavy gypsum board as conventioally used. lots of opportunity here, for the go-getter.
How are these materials joined together? Ho do you interface these materials or can you? What is the cost of these materials compared to existing materials being used now? How do you attach the materials to other things like studs?
Well, there is still work to be done. They are not on the commercial market yet as compounds. But I imagine it would be possible to encase taut strands of nanotube in a matrix of aerogel. This might be small threads encased in aerogel, then woven into a 'cable' which is then encased in aerogel. Lots of work to optimize this left to do. They could be joined together simply with nuts/bolts like steel girders. But use nuts/bolts made from similar materials. Nanotubes are simply carbon, so very cheap. Likewise, aerogel is simply air (99%) and glass (1%), though I'm not certain of the newer ones as to what they've added to reduce the brittleness. One would attach a sheetrock with screws like conventionally (or maybe nails, like conventionally). Why don't you be the 'go-getter' and work on it?
There are many more examples. Haven't you heard of all the improvements to steel? But people still use low-grade steel. It all comes down to price.
Water interacts with graphene nanotubes in a very interesting way. In experiments, the water flowed through these tubes, 10,000 times faster than computer simulations predicted, with the water flowing like stop and go traffic; bursts. The original simulations predicted a more uniform flow pattern that was much slower. What appears to happen is the atomic structure of the carbon nano-tube does not allow the water molecules to overlap its hydrogen bonding orbitals in ways that fit like lock and key; oil and water surface tension. At the same time, the tube is too narrow for the water to lower potential by hydrogen bonding with other water molecules, in the same way it can in an open container. Because of the limbo between surface tension and no way to reduce this potential within the water, the potential discharges itself through mass movement. Once that group of water is released, the next group of water molecules enters and tries to deal with the situation; rest, until it ow has to discharge. This stop ad go traffic is 10,000 faster than expected; nano-pump to run carbon nano machines with water. http://www.pcb007.com/pages/zone.cgi?a=98084
