Is Graphene The Next Big Boom? | Kjirstin Breure

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**Kjirstin Breure** (0:57)
It is the strongest and most conductive material ever discovered. It is really the most powerful material that we've ever found. You can put graphene in almost any material really known to man, whether you mentioned a few concrete, carbon fiber, you name it. It works well with other carbon materials and it works well with other graphenes. So truly an unlimited market potential here because there are just an unlimited amount of use cases.

**Adam Taggart** (1:31)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money, I'm Thoughtful Money Founder and your host, Adam Taggart, welcoming you here for a really interesting conversation that we're going to have. It's on a material known as graphene, which I feel like I'm a little bit behind the curve. I sort of heard the word graphene out there, but I didn't really know exactly what it was or what it could be used for. And I will say, I'll introduce her in just a moment, but I'll say I've rarely had the sort of immediate demand that I started receiving around the turn of this year from listeners here who really wanted to see an interview done on graphene and its potential uses. But specifically, the name of this particular company and particular executive kept coming up.
And basically, as I always like to tell you guys, you ask, I listen. So based on popular demand, we're going to cover this topic. Now, for those who, like me, do not know what graphene is, it's a two-dimensional variety of the element carbon, C on the periodic table. It's what's known as a carbon allotrope. And that means basically it consists of a single layer of carbon atoms tightly bound in a hexagonal honeycomb lattice. And it's known for its exceptionally high tensile strength, something like 200 times the strength of steel. It's an excellent electrical conductor. It's transparent when you look at it. And being the thinnest two-dimensional material in the world. On a microscopic scale, graphene is actually the strongest material ever mentioned. So this thing has a ton of potential commercial uses. It can be used to enhance batteries and have them charge faster, create durable anti-corrosion coatings, flexible electronics, higher-efficiency solar panels, advanced biomedical applications like drug delivery. It acts as a super material additive in composites, strengthening everything from, they say, tennis rackets to car tires. So to learn more about this potentially wonder material and how it might transform the world that we live in going forward, we're very fortunate to be here with Kjirstin Breure. And I really hope I pronounced your last name correctly there, Kjirstin. She is president, co-founder, and chief executive officer of HydroGraph Clean Power. And if the market reaction is any indicator of the true potential for this company, its stock is up 1900% in the past 12 months, just 164% in the year so far here in 2026, and 90% in the past month. Those are pretty stunning numbers there. So anyways, Kjirstin, it's a real pleasure to meet you. Welcome to Thoughtful Money.

**Kjirstin Breure** (4:26)
Thank you so much for having me. All right.

**Adam Taggart** (4:28)
Well, thanks so much for joining us today. Okay. So I did my best job there to give just a really concise starting off point for graphene. First off, how did I do? Did I get relatively close to what this thing is and what it does?

**Kjirstin Breure** (4:42)
No, that was great. So as you mentioned, it is the strongest and most conductive material ever discovered.

**Adam Taggart** (4:47)
And it was actually the most conductive as well.

**Kjirstin Breure** (4:50)
As well.

**Adam Taggart** (4:50)
Wow. Okay.

**Kjirstin Breure** (4:51)
This is all depending on the materials you're using it with, how it's processed, the quality of the graphene. So there are a lot of variables there, but it is really the most powerful material that we've ever found. And as you mentioned as well, it's usually an additive. So anything that's two-dimensional, you're really adding into a 3D counterpart, not to overcomplicate it, but really graphene is kind of a disruptive technology, but we don't compete with other materials. You can put graphene in almost any material really known to man, whether you mentioned a few concrete, carbon fiber, you name it. It works well with other carbon materials and it works well with other graphenes. So truly an unlimited market potential here because there are just an unlimited amount of use cases. And as it's brand new, we're still kind of figuring out how to use it. It was discovered in 2004 at the University of Manchester with the infamous scotch tape method, where researchers quite literally put a piece of scotch tape on graphite, eventually isolating one atomic layer. So because that was part of the discovery, we thought that this material existed likely from the 50s. It was eventually confirmed. They won the Nobel Prize. And since then, customers or companies have been kind of racing to produce high quality graphene. Most companies are starting with graphite as a feedstock, and they're either mechanically or chemically exfoliating it to try to get down to that one atomic layer. HydroGraph is very different. We are a synthetic production company. So we detonate hydrocarbon gases exactly as it sounds. We explode acetylene, which is our favorite hydrocarbon, though all are covered in our patent, acetylene and oxygen. We basically pump these gases into a steel chamber. Our reactor is kind of like an engine where we have four 70 liter chambers, very thick carbon steel, and then we have electrodes inside that fire. It destabilizes the acetylene molecules. You would know acetylene as a welding gas, most common use. So it's very volatile. You can imagine it's bringing a lot of energy with it. So we need very, very little energy to initiate that reaction. We create an explosion. And if you could imagine a puff of smoke being generated in that chamber, that's effectively our product. So that puff of smoke settles, and it's a very, very black fluffy powder that we then package and sell to our customer. So simple in theory, and it's great because, like I mentioned, no energy to initiate the reaction, and our only by-product is syngas or synthesis gas, and that is a commodity material. So no waste and very, very low energy usage, and extremely scalable.