Preparation and electrothermal performance of nickel tailing modified nano-graphite/multilayer graphene composite coating

In this study, nickel tailings were utilized to prepare electrothermal coatings composited with nano-graphite/multilayer graphene, and the effects of heat treatment temperature and time of nickel tailings on the performance of electrothermal coatings were investigated. The experimental results show that the addition of nickel tailings can significantly enhance the performance of the composite electrothermal coatings. Using nickel tailings treated at 60 °C for 2 h caused the temperature response time of the coatings to decrease by 57%, and the maximum temperature was 55.4 °C. However, as the treatment temperature was increased to 100 °C, a large amount of oxygen was introduced into the system, which led to a weakening of the ferric ion conduction in the ferromagnesian olivine, resulting in only a 28.6% reduction in the temperature response time at the maximum temperature of 45.4 °C. Meanwhile, it was established that the multidimensional stabilized conductive network formed by nickel tailings and nano-graphite/multilayer graphene enhanced the comprehensive performance of the coating. In addition, the study on the coating work stability revealed that the electrothermal coating prepared by adding nickel tailings treated at 60 °C for 2 h can maintain the maximum stable temperature above 55 °C for a long period of time, which is significantly better than the samples without nickel tailings and with nickel tailings heat-treated at 100 °C. This electrothermal composite coating is particularly suitable for low-pressure and low-power high-efficiency heating equipment, energy saving and environmental protection. Compared with the existing work, this experiment uses nickel tailings solid waste as auxiliary filler, which has the advantages of low cost, simple fabrication process, energy saving, environmental protection, low energy consumption, etc. It provides a more sustainable and eco-friendly solution for heating needs in a variety of fields. The material will be developed in the direction of higher conversion efficiency and higher temperature threshold in the future. It can be widely used in the fields of intelligent heating of houses, intelligent electric heating of clothes, and de-icing of wings of aircrafts.