Study on structures and properties of isotropic pitches and carbon fibers from co-carbonization of aromatic-rich distillate oil and polyethylene glycol

Obtaining cost-competitive carbon fibers with excellent mechanical properties remains a great challenge. Here we report the co-carbonization of polyethylene glycol (PEG) and an aromatic-rich distillate oil (HCT0-RF) to prepare isotropic pitches that have superior spinnability for the production of carbon fibers. Among all of the carbon fiber productions, H-P10-CFs exhibited the best tensile strength of 1050 MPa and elongation of 2.5 %, respectively, at the breaking point. We reason that the addition of PEG into HCTO-RF can effectively increase the yield of isotropic pitches, accompanied by restricting the appearance of the mesophase spheres. The amount of aliphatic carbon in spinnable pitches were observed to increase with the amount of PEG. Thus, the changes in molecular structure can improve the rheological properties of spinnable pitch and enhance the spinnability. In addition, the increase of aliphatic components can accelerate the oxidative reaction and promote the stabiliza-tion efficiency. Unfortunately, excessive aliphatic components would inevitably cause higher oxygen uptake content, which deteriorate the uniformity of the fiber structures during carbonization process. With the increase of PEG content, the tensile strength of these carbon fibers increased first and then decreased. The optimized PEG content should be in the range of 5-10 wt%. The PEG acted as the co-carbonization agent provides new perspective in the field of carbon fiber production.