Thermal, chemical and morphological properties of carbon fibres derived from chemically pre-treated wool fibres

Abstract

In this work, the feasibility of using wool fibre as a carbon fibre precursor was explored as well as whether chemical treatments to wool fibre can increase the carbon fibre yield and properties of the produced carbon fibres. Wool fibres were treated with a range of chemicals including lignin, tannic acid, polystyrene sulphonate, and chlorine in conjunction with a polyamide resin. The treated fibres were stabilised in air at 160 C followed by pyrolysis at 800 C under a nitrogen atmosphere. The resulting carbon fibres were characterised in terms of carbon yield, tensile strength, surface roughness, porosity, crystal structure and surface hydrophobicity. The carbon fibre yield was 16.7% for the untreated while the lignin pre-treatment increased the carbon yield up to 25.8%. Generally the surface of the carbon fibre made from both untreated and treated fibre exhibited high hydrophilicity except the lignin and chlorine/polyamide resintreated fibre which showed hydrophobicity. Although the tensile strength achieved for the various produced carbon fibre was poor compared to a commercially available pitch-based carbon fibre, the developed carbon fibre still can be utilised in thermoplastic composite manufacturing.

Stabilisation of sheep wool fibres under air atmosphere: Study of physicochemical changes

“…% of total mass loss. This feature is associated with the rupture of the hydrogen bonds of the peptide structure of the wool fibres, thereby undergoing condensation reactions rendering to a solid to melted phase change [13]. The temperature range is in agreement with other studies reporting the thermal decomposition of wool [17,18].…”

“…One of the main drawbacks of synthetic and cellulosic fibres is that during a thermal treatment, they fuse, decompose or degrade losing mechanical strength and morphology [13], so the choice of the thermal processing pathway of natural fibres will control the features of the resulting material. A common procedure for the preparation of a material with fibre morphology and the desired mechanical strength is based on performing an oxidative thermal stabilisation of the fibre precursor at mild temperature.…”

Supercapacitor Electrode Based on Activated Carbon Wool Felt

“…The use of ACF have been extended to multiple processes based on adsorption and catalysis, such as gas separation, wastewater purification, advanced oxidation processes, and supercapacitors [15][16][17][18][19]. Nowadays the CF, as well as ACF, production is based on the use of petroleum derivatives as precursor materials, which implies high-energy demands and a major contribution to the carbon footprint [20,21]. These problems could be minimized by using a precursor material from a renewable source; many studies had already used biomass as an ACF precursor, and in other cases natural fibres, such as silk, jute, cotton, or bamboo, have been used [22][23][24][25][26].…”

Characterization analysis of raw and pyrolyzed plane tree seed (Platanus orientalis L.) samples for its application in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology

“…In addition, for pyrolyzed sample (Fig. 2b), the broad peak at around 2h = 44.5°can be assigned to turbostratic band of the disordered carbon material (100 direction) [48]. However, the peaks were not as sharp as that of pure carbon [49] and these results are direct evidence for the presence of carbon in all considered samples.…”