Investigation on porous properties of carbon/carbon composite cryogels by using weighted arithmetic mean

Abstract

Cotton fibers (CF) and resorcinol and formaldehyde (RF) sol were used to synthesize composite cryogels. They were carbonized to prepare carbon/carbon (C/C) composite cryogels. In this work, the molar ratio of resorcinol to sodium carbonate (R/C), the mass concentration of resorcinol to distilled water (R/W) and the mass ratio of CF to RF (CF/RF) were changed as 100 and 200 mol/mol, 0.25 and 0.50 g/cm3 and 0.00 up to 0.64 g/g, respectively. The C/C composites were characterized by nitrogen adsorption and scanning electron microscopy. The results showed that the mesopore structure of C/C composites could be controlled by the adjustment of an R/W or R/C ratio. Moreover, the mean micropore sizes of C/C composite cryogels were kept equivalently to those of normal carbon cryogels. The weighted arithmetic mean was well applied to the BET surface area and micropore surface area of C/C composites with the deviation of about 21% for the high R/C ratio; however, it poor for the low R/C ratio. The weighted arithmetic mean also estimated the micropore volume of C/C composite cryogels with the deviation of about 20% for the CF/RF ratio smaller than 0.40 g/g. Moreover, the weighted arithmetic mean can be used as a guideline to estimate the mesopore volume.