A study of the liquid pyrolysis products of a propane-butane mixture as a precursor in the synthesis of cellular carbon foam

Abstract

The chemical composition of the pyrolytic liquid products (PLP) of the propane-butane mixture, which serve as a precursor in the synthesis of carbon foam with the cellular structure (a cellular carbon material), was studied. PLP were shown to be a mixture of hydrocarbons containing 95 wt.% carbon and 4 wt.% hydrogen, which testify to the presence of polycyclic aromatic compounds.A study by means of sequential extraction, structural-group analysis and chromato-mass spectrometry revealed the heterogeneous nature of PLP components and detected both the lighter fractions (14 wt.%) soluble in alkanes and the polynuclear aromatic compounds (72 wt.%) soluble in chloroform. The averaged PLP molecule with the molecular weight 240 аmu contains approximately twenty carbon atoms that form polynuclear structures including five aromatic rings. The following main components were identified: naphthalene, 1,1′-biphenyl, acenaphthylene, 9H-fluorene, anthracene, phenanthrene, fluoranthene, pyrene, acepyrene, triphenylene, benz[e]acefenantrylene, benzopyrene, and benzo[ghi]perylene.