Accelerated thermostabilization through electron-beam irradiation for the preparation of cellulose-derived carbon fibers

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Access rights

openAccess

URL

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

Date

2024-01-31

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

15

Series

Carbon, Volume 218

Abstract

The potential of biobased materials like regenerated celluloses as precursors for carbon fibers (CFs) is long known. However, owing to an intrinsic two pathway pyrolysis mechanism of cellulose its carbonization is accompanied with side reactions under generation of volatiles. In practice, this leads to a reduced char yield, results in inferior mechanical properties of the CFs, and requires time-consuming thermostabilization procedures or wet-chemical pretreatments during production. Thus, their market share currently remains low. In ambitions to circumvent these issues, the potential of electron beam irradiation (EBI) as a dry chemical pretreatment for cellulosic CFs was investigated in this study. The conducted chemical analyses showed that high radiation dosages (2 MGy) lead to a strong depolymerization of the cellulose chains down to oligomers, while the fibrous macrostructure was preserved. Minor oxidation reactions were also evident. Thorough thermostabilization experiments under air in the temperature range from 100 °C to 250 °C revealed that reactions caused by EBI treatment alone were insufficient to increase the char yield. Only when the EBI treated precursor fibers are subjected to heating between 200 and 250 °C the char yield increased significantly to 34.4 % compared to 12.1 % for the untreated fiber. Furthermore, the EBI treatment strongly accelerated the reactions during thermostabilization allowing to collect CFs at heating rates of 2 °C/min compared to 0.5 °C/min needed for pristine fibers. Additionally, cellulose-lignin composite fibers were subjected to EBI treatment, proving that this strategy can also be applied to these emerging biobased CF precursors.

Description

Funding Information: This research was supported by the National Research Council of Science & Technology ( NST ) grants by the Korea government ( MSIT ) [grant number: CAP22091-000 and CRC23011-000 ], and National R&D Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea ( NRF ) grant funded by the Korea government ( MSIT ) [grant number: 2021M3H4A1A03041296 ]. LF and MH gratefully acknowledge funding from the Academy of Finland (projects: 348354 and 353841 ) and financial support by the Foundation of Walter Ahlström . Authors are grateful to Youn-Mook Lim and Huisu Kim of Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute for his valuable advice and suggestion for this work. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords

Accelerated thermostabilization, Carbon fiber, Cellulose, Electron-beam irradiation, Lignin

Other note

Citation

Jang, M, Fliri, L, Trogen, M, Choi, D, Han, J H, Kim, J, Kim, S K, Lee, S, Kim, S S & Hummel, M 2024, ' Accelerated thermostabilization through electron-beam irradiation for the preparation of cellulose-derived carbon fibers ', Carbon, vol. 218, 118759 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbon.2023.118759