Preparation And Application In EDLSs Of Water Soluble Pitch-based Porous Carbons

Water soluble pitch is plenty in functional groups and thermohardening. Basedon these properties, no organic solvent and stabilization process is needed during thepreparation of thereof activated carbons and carbon aerogels. In this paper, coal-tarpitch (CP) was used as raw material. After oxidation with a mixture of concentratednitric acid and sulfuric acid, CP was converted to CPA which was soluble in water. Wediscussed the effects of KOH activation and H3PO4activation method on the structureof the preparated CPA-based activated carbon in this work. We aslso studied thestructure and forming mechanism of CPA-based carbon aerogels and develop theirapplications in energy storage.To study the significance of functional groups and microcrystalline of the precursorin preparing CPA-based activated carbon in KOH activation, we appliedpre-carbonization upon the CPA under different conditions to control these twoparameters. After investigating the structure and electrochemical performance of theresulting ACs, it could be proved that functional groups and microcrystalline of theprecursor would indeed affect the structure and electrochemical performance indifferent ways. H3PO4activation was proposed to prepare CPA-based ACs in thiswork. The sample PAC624owned the highest specific surface area of1840m2g-1aswell as well-developed mesoporous structures, certainly with nice adsorptionproperties and electrochemical performance.Using CPA as raw material, carbon aerogels was successfully synthesized viasolvent exchange method at room temperature, followed by drying at ambientpressure and carbonization in an inert atmosphere. The resulting product was piled upby highly connected nano-particles, which constructed a3-D architecture alsoproviding certain mesopores and macropores. Such special dimensional structureguaranteed the carbon aerogel a potential electrode material for electrochemicalcapacitor, especially after further activation. As the electrode materialsforsupercapacitors, the specific capacitance of it was215.5F g-1at1A g-1, remaining83.2%of initiate capacitance as the current density up to40A g-1.