Organic and Carbon Gels: From Laboratory to Industry?

Abstract

Since the first report on organic gels based on the polycondensation of resorcinol with formaldehyde presented by Pekala in 1989, the number of publications, on both organic gels and carbon gels has experimented an enormous increase to the point where nowadays are published every year more than a hundred papers covering topics ranging from variations in the synthesis to the potential applications of this vast family of porous materials. This is due to the fact that, by controlling the synthesis conditions, it is possible to obtain materials with a suitable porosity for a specific application and even also with predetermined chemical properties, something that is practically impossible to achieve with any other porous materials. However, even after almost 30 years of continuous researching at laboratory scale, their industrial production and commercialization are still marginal compared with that of competitive materials. This chapter summarizes how the physicochemical properties of organic and carbon gels can be designed by controlling all the variables involved in the synthesis process. The chapter also addresses the most challenging problem of their mass production, i.e., scaling-up of production methods currently used in the labs.