Red mud is a solid waste residue of the digestion of bauxite ores with caustic soda for alumina production. Its disposal remains a worldwide issue in terms of environmental concerns. During the past decades, extensive work has been done by a lot of researchers to develop various economic ways for the utilization of red mud. This paper provides a review on the comprehensive utilization of red mud globally. The research progress of safe stockpiling of red mud is summarized. Enormous quantity of red mud is generated worldwide every year posing a very serious and alarming environmental problem. This paper describes the production and characterization of bauxite and red mud in view of World and Indian context. It reviews comprehensively the disposal and neutralization methods of red mud and gives the detailed assessment of the work carried until now for the utilization of red mud in different fields. The chemical and mineralogical characteristics of red mud are summarized with their environmental concerns.

In this work, polypropylene (PP) and graphene nanoplatelet (GNPs) composites are routed through twin screw mixing and injection moulding. Two types of GNPs with a fixed size of 25 µm with surface areas ranging from 50–80 m²/g (H25, average thickness 15 nm) and 120–150 m²/g (M25, average thickness 6–8 nm) were blended with PP at loading rates of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 weight%. Mechanical properties such as tensile, flexural, and impact strengths and Young’s modulus (Ε) are determined. The X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and polarised light microscopy (PLM) techniques are used to understand the crystallisation, thermal, dynamic mechanical, and structural behaviour of the prepared composites. The improvement of mechanical strength is observed with GNP loading for both grades. Decreasing the GNP thickness decreases the impact strength and on the other hand improves the tensile and flexural strengths and Young’s modulus. Maximum tensile (≈33 MPa) and flexural (≈58.81 MPa) strength is found for the composite carrying 5 wt% M25. However, maximum impact strength (0.197 J) is found for PP-5 wt% H25. XRD analysis confirms GNPs have an induction effect on PP’s β phase crystal structure. The PP-GNP composite exhibits better thermal stability based on determining the T_D (degradation temperature), T₁₀ (temperature at 10% weight loss), T₅₀ (temperature at 50% weight loss), and T_R (temperature at residual weight). Enhancement in melt (Tm) and crystallisation temperatures (Tc) is are observed due to a heterogeneous nucleation effect. The FESEM analysis concludes that the GNP thickness has a significant effect on the degree of dispersion and agglomeration. The smaller the thickness, the better is the dispersion and the lower is the agglomeration. Overall, the use of thinner GNPs is more advantageous in improving the polymer properties.

Graphene has accomplished huge notoriety and interest from the universe of science considering its exceptional mechanical physical and thermal properties. Graphene is an allotrope of carbon having one atom thick size and planar sheets thickly stuffed in a lattice structure resembling a honeycomb structure. Numerous methods to prepare graphene have been created throughout a limited span of time. Due to its fascinating properties, it has found some extensive applications to a wide variety of fields. So, we believe there is a necessity to produce a document of the outstanding methods and some of the novel applications of graphene. This article centres around the strategies to orchestrate graphene and its applications in an attempt to sum up the advancements that has taken place in the research of graphene.