Abstract
At present, activated carbon fiber (ACF) generally consists of materials such as cellulose, acrylic phenol and so on. Activated carbon fiber is usually made by gas activation by CO2, and steam. Mesophase pitch-based carbon fiber (MPCF) has been developed to achieve higher strength and elasticity. Due to the difficulty of activating the MPCF using conventional methods, it has not been used as a starting material for ACFs. In spite of having such difficulties, the development of new activation method can lead us to a new ACF having pore structure and adsorption property different from conventional materials.
In this paper, we present the study on the relation between the newly developed KOH activation method and the specific surface area of the activated MPCFs by changing the activating conditions. Using our method, we could suc-cessfully control the specific surface area of the MPCF-based ACFs. This activation method proved to be promising for the development of the ACFs with novel characteristics.
