Patent ID: 8187566

Claim:
A continuous method for functionalizing a carbon nanotube, comprising: a) feeding an oxidizer into a preheater while feeding a carbon nanotube solution including carbon nanotube and solvent into the preheater via a heat exchanger to produce a carbon nanotube mixture of the carbon nanotube solution and the oxidizer and then preheating the resultant carbon nanotube mixture at 200 to 370° C; b) feeding the carbon nanotube mixture from the step (a) into a functionalizing reactor at a subcritical water condition of 50 to 400 atm and then feeding a compound having one or more functional group selected from a group consisting of carboxyl, carboxylate, amine, amine salt, tetravalent-amine, phosphoric acid group, phosphate, sulfuric acid group, sulfate, thiol, ester, amide, epoxide, aldehyde, ketone and a mixture thereof into the functionalizing reactor to obtain a functionalized product; c) cooling down the functionalized product from the step (b) into 0 to 100° C. and depressurizing the functionalized product into 1 to 10 atm by feeding the functionalized product into a cooling down and depressurizing part via the heat exchanger of the step (a) while carrying out the process of the step (a); and d) recovering the cooled down and depressurized product.