Conversion of polyacrylonitrile fibers to activated carbon fibers: Effect of activation

Abstract

SYNOPSISPolyacrylonitrile (PAN)-based activated carbon fibers were developed with the idea of increasing their potential and efficiency in industrial applications. The PAN-based fibers were first oxidized in air in a continuous multistage stabilization process, and then subjected to a continuous, low temperature carbonization and activation treatment in a mixture of steam and argon. The effect of the activation condition on the specific surface area, elemental composition, as well as the morphological structure of activated carbon fibers was studied. The surface area of the carbon fibers increased remarkably after the steam activation. It was found that steam activation promoted the elimination of nitrogen from the fiber. The bulk oxygen content of the fibers increased upon activation, probably due to formation of carbon-oxygen functionalities on the surface of the activated carbon fibers. The surface oxygen level of activated carbon fibers was greater than the bulk analysis of oxygen. It was observed that activation decayed the order of the carbon structure. 0 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Recycling of carbon fibre reinforced polymeric waste for the production of activated carbon fibres

“…This is an indication of the etching effect of activation on the carbon fibre structure which leads to removal of some parts of the fibre. This trend has also been observed by Wang et al [25]. They investigated the effect of steam activation on the characteristics of activated carbon fibres prepared from polyacrylonitrile fibres and noted progressive reduction in the fibre diameter.…”

Unusual pre-oxidized polyacrylonitrile fibres behaviour against their activation with CO2: carbonization effect

“…On the other hand, all of ACF show adsorption at low relative pressures (< 0.3), which is characteristic of Type I isotherms, according to IUPAC classification (Sing et al 1985). This indicates the essentially microporous nature of ACF-PAN, as has been observed in previous works (Park et al 2001, Ko et al 1992, Tavanai et al 2009, Wang et al 1996. The most interesting aspect of this chapter is the microporosity development given by the activating agents.…”

Adsorption of heavy metals onto activated carbons derived from polyacrylonitrile fiber

“…On the contrary, the formation of coke as a result of exothermic reaction may assist the cyclization that may prevent the release of nitrogen functionalities in activation [24]. The increase of oxygen content in PS80 was due to the reaction of water molecules in steam with carbon atom at the edges of basal plane [15]. Oxygen complexes are predicted to be basic in nature and may comprise of carbonyl groups including ketones and pyrones [31,32].…”

“…Activated carbon fiber (ACF) is noted to possess a bigger bulk volume than the ordinary pelletized or powdered activated carbon, thus giving a fast adsorption and desorption rates [9]. ACF can be produced from coal [11] and petroleum pitches [12,13], rayon [14], polyacrylonitrile (PAN) [15][16][17] and phenolic resin [18] through high temperature gasification in steam or CO 2 . Ko et al [19] reported that steam was better than CO 2 for generating a well-distributed surface area of ACF.…”

“…A number of studies have been focused on the preparation of PAN-ACF from its raw precursor, where the values of specific surface area varying from 500 to 900 m 2 /g [15,17,21]. In other development, a great concern has been shown on the removal of organic compounds [9,18,22] and air pollutants [17,23].…”