Activated Carbon Fiber - the Hybrid of Carbon Fiber and Activated Carbon

From application perspectives in adsorption, activated carbon fiber (ACF) is by far one of the most important carbon nanoporous materials to be considered. It has great advantages over other commercial porous storage materials. Activated carbon fiber (ACF) is a promising microporous material with a fiber shape and well-defined porous structure. In general, production of ACF can be commercially manufactured from synthetic carbon fiber (CF) with providing an additional activation process. The special characteristics of ACF include high packing density, excellent volumetric capacity, high speed adsorption/desorption and easy handling. The processing costs of ACF is a combination of fiber processing cost and activation cost which is relatively higher compared other activated carbon. Lately, production of ACF from lower costs precursors have been suggested from researcher by using agricultural wastes in activated carbon (AC) preparation. However, there were not much detail or publicly-available sources of information describing these natural fiber derived ACF, compared to synthetic ACF. The reasons include higher cost of fiber processing and difficulties of process to prepare fiber in desired shape. The background and development of carbon materials and ACF are described. In this section, topics such as raw materials, preparations, advantages and applications of ACFs will be covered.