The Beijing Graphene Carbon Century Technology Co., Ltd released the world first graphene air cleaner -- Xijing -- on Oct 31. The product can remove 97 percent of formaldehyde from the air within two hours, an indication of its benefits for public health.

More than 97 percent formaldehyde absorption rate

Statistics shows that when the formaldehyde concentration is over 0.1 milligrams per cubic meter, people smell an odor; when the concentration exceeds 0.5 milligrams per cubic meter, they experience eye irritation and if the amount is more than one milligram, they feel sick and cough.

Many approaches have tried to eliminate the toxic gas but failed because of low absorption rates or production of secondary pollution.

The Xijing air cleaner can absorb formaldehyde efficiently and is safe for humans.

Xu Ting, CTO of Carbon Century, said the purification efficiency test was conducted by the national standard, a 30 cubic meter box with one milligram per cubic meter initial formaldehyde concentration. The common carbon elimination method can only absorb 40 percent of toxic substances in two hours, but Xijing can achieve more than 97 percent absorption rate within the same time period.

According to data collected by the Center for Building Environment Testing at Tsinghua University, the absorption amount of Xijing is 100 times larger than that of common absorbing products. Furthermore, Xijing has passed a bio-experiment indicating that it does no harm to human skin.

Graphene's application

Yan Liqun, president of Carbon Century, said that graphene is called the magic material of the 21st century and that discovering its applications in daily life is a rigorous process. He said thousands of experiments were conducted to explore how to make the product more efficient and harmless.

Xu Ting suggested that graphene modifies the activated carbon -- keeping the structure of the carbon but increasing its active sites and functional surface area, which improves its absorption rate and avoids what would normally be secondary pollution from unmodified carbon.

Carbon Century developed the first mass production of graphene in the world in August, 2015 and was the first in the world to discover that graphene can be moved only by light. The company also discovered that it can even overcome gravity and move upwards, which means that it can be used as a new power resource in space exploration.