Abstract:
Sri Lanka is famous for highly crystalline natural vein graphite. Bogala and Kahatagaha Kolongaha are main graphite mines which are situated in the central highlands. Sri Lankan natural graphite is found in various morphologies with different structural and physical characteristics such as flake, plate and fibrous graphite. Sri Lanka graphite has high purity carbon.
At present graphite industry in Sri Lanka is mainly limited for pencil productions. But in other countries which are producing graphite with high quality, motivate to conduct worthy industries. China, Mexico, Canada, Brazil and Madagascar are other countries which produce graphite for world market. Sri Lanka was top of the leading supplier of natural graphite to the world market and fulfilled the 20%-35% of the total world production. High labor cost, expensive deep mining methods and high mining cost are main problems to decay production of graphite. Therefore currently Sri Lankan graphite is unable to conflict in world market. As well as the lack of modern skills are main detriments for graphite industry.
Currently synthetic graphite is used instead of natural graphite to produce different kinds of products. The synthetic graphite is known as artificial, manufactured or electro graphite. A carbon product (100% pure carbon) has been subject to a further stage of heat treatment at a temperature about 2400°C. In the main, synthetic graphite is used for electrodes in lithium ion batteries, coatings, conductive fillers, rubber and plastic compounds, foundry etc. However, in Sri Lanka, there are limited work has been done to study structural characteristics of graphite. Therefore, Sri Lankan natural graphite is unable to use for some industries like electrochemical application industries. Most of graphite used for applications as powder form. As a result, rhombohedra content is increasing gradually. Certain applications need rhombohedra phases rather than hexagonal phase.
