A Procedure for Preparation of Semi-activated Carbon Fiber without any Treatment under High Temperature

Abstract

A procedure for preparing the semi-activated carbon fiber (SACF) at low temperature is proposed. The first step of the procedure is coating of an inorganic fiber (E-glass fiber) by an adsorbent mixture (powder activated carbon) using methyl cellulose and water as gluing material. In this work, a set of experiments were performed to attain appropriate adsorbent mixture for good quality coating. The best composition was investigated based on the adsorption and the mechanical properties of the coated fibers. The results showed that an adsorbent mixture containing 3 to 4 wt% of methyl cellulose, and 15-20 wt% of activated carbon renders good quality coating. The adsorption property of the coated fibers was studied by determination of iodine number for the adsorbent mixture. In this work, the weight percent of the coated adsorbent mixture on the fibers have also been measured and reported. The mechanical properties were examined by flow of air through a packing of the coated fibers. BET surface area of the samples was also examined and compared to other reported works. The results showed that the surfaces area of the samples were either equal to or higher than other disclosed works. In order to test the weight loss of the coated fibers, the weight of packing was measured after 20, 40 and 60 min flowing of air through the packing. The weight loss in all cases was very low (up to 0.001 g); thus good quality of coating was occurred.