Abstract
Preparation of high-value pitch-based carbon fibres (CFs) from mesophase pitch precursor is of great importance towards low-cost CFs. Herein, we developed a method to reduce the cost of CFs precursor through incorporating high loading of coal tar pitch (CTP) into polyacrylonitrile (PAN) polymer solution. The CTP with a loading of 25% and 50% was blended with PAN and their spinnability was examined by electrospinning process. The effect of CTP on thermal stabilization and carbonisation of PAN fibres was investigated by thermal analyses methods. Moreover, electrospun PAN/CTP fibres were carbonised at two different temperatures i.e., 850 °C and 1200 °C and their crystallographic structures of resulting such low-cost PAN/CTP CFs were studied through X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman analyses. Compared to pure PAN CFs, the electrical resistivity of PAN/25% CTP CFs significantly decreased by 92%, reaching 1.6 kΩ/sq. The overall results showed that PAN precursor containing 25% CTP resulted in balanced properties in terms of spinnability, thermal and structural properties. It is believed that CTP has a great potential to be used as an additive for PAN precursor and will pave the way for cost-reduced and high-performance CFs.
Highlights
Due to outstanding specific strength and modulus, carbon fibres (CFs) have been used commercially in structural composite applications for high performance, light-weighting as well as ergonomics [1,2,3,4].The global market for carbon fibre is anticipated to triple in one decade and exceed 100 thousand tonnes in 2020 with a value of over $3 billion [5]
These “low-temperature pitches” are expected to contain semi-coke and applying solvent extraction. These “low-temperature pitches” are expected to contain more reactive structures than those from a coke oven which are exposed to high temperatures in the more reactive structures than those from a coke oven which are exposed to high temperatures in the coking process
200 g coal was heated in four batches of 50 g at 5 ◦ C/min to 400 ◦ C
Summary
Due to outstanding specific strength and modulus, carbon fibres (CFs) have been used commercially in structural composite applications for high performance, light-weighting as well as ergonomics [1,2,3,4].The global market for carbon fibre is anticipated to triple in one decade and exceed 100 thousand tonnes in 2020 with a value of over $3 billion [5]. Due to outstanding specific strength and modulus, carbon fibres (CFs) have been used commercially in structural composite applications for high performance, light-weighting as well as ergonomics [1,2,3,4]. While carbon fibre composites are currently used in aircraft and some racing cars, the cost of CFs is prohibitively high for many other industry sectors. The high price of CFs is directly related to the cost and yield of the precursor from which it is obtained and the cost of its conversion. The vast majority of commercial CFs are currently produced from polyacrylonitrile (PAN) which is an expensive precursor, contributing to ~51% of the price of carbon fibre. Given the significant contribution of the precursor to the final price of CFs, an investigation into alternative precursors can potentially
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