Synthesis of mesocarbon microbeads from high‐temperature coal tar pitch: Effects of quinoline insoluble

Abstract

Mesocarbon microbeads (MCMBs) were a kind of functional artificial carbon materials, which was widely used in varied areas with its excellent properties. MCMB was generally produced by thermal‐polymerization of high‐temperature coal tar pitch under oxygen‐free atmosphere. Generally, the content of primary quinoline insoluble (PQI) play a key role on the quality of the derived MCMB. In order to confirm the relationship between the content of PQI and the properties of MCMB, 15 kinds of high‐temperature coal tar pitch with varied content of PQI were used as the raw materials to produce MCMB. The particle size distribution, optical micro‐structure, surface morphology, and carbon micro‐crystalline of calcinated MCMB were determined in this work. The results shown that the content of PQI from 7% to 13% was a suitable content to generate high quality MCMB. What is more, the derived MCMB has a high yield of 33.09% with good sphericity, the uniformity index of particle size was 1.02, and the graphite carbon content of calcinated MCMB (calcinated temperature of 1100°C) was 79.92%. Thus, the high‐temperature coal tar pitch with the PQI content of 7%–13% was the preferably raw materials to produce high‐quality MCMB by thermal‐polymerization method.