Activated Carbon Fibers from Chemically Modified Coal Tar Pitches

Coal tar pitch was chemically modified with 10 wt% benzoquinone (BQ) to raise the softening point of isotropic pitch precursor and the precursor was melt-spun into pitch fibers, stabilized, carbonized and activated with steam at $900^{\circ}C$. The weight loss of carbon fiber-benzoquinone (CF-BQ) increased with the increase of activation time like other fibers, but was lower than those of Kureha fiber at the same activation time in spite of larger geometric surface area. Those adsorption isotherms fitted into 'Type I' according to Brunauer, Deming, Deming and Teller classification. However, there was very thin low-pressure hysteresis that lower closure points of the hysteresis are about 0.42-0.45. From the pore size distribution curves, there might be some micropores having narrow-necked bottle; a series of interconnected pore is more likely than discrete bottles. FT-IR studies showed that the functional groups such as carboxyl, quinone, and phenol were introduced to ACFs-BQ surface after steam activation. Methylene blue decolorization and iodine adsorption capacity of ACF-BQ increased linearly with the increase of specific surface area and was larger than that of ACF-Kureha at the same specific surface area.