Enhancing carbon fiber production with low-cost oil residues

Superior carbon fiber supplies could possibly be utilized in functions from wind turbine blades to biomedical implants following the event of a low-cost carbon fiber feedstock.

The carbon fibers had been spun from synergistic blends of the low-value heavy oils left over from crude oil refining by members of KAUST’s Clear Vitality Analysis Platform. The work couldn’t solely facilitate broader carbon fiber uptake but additionally create sustainable new makes use of for residual oils because the world transitions to various vitality techniques.

“Crude oil is a resource with immense potential beyond fuels,” says Edwin Guevara Romero, a researcher within the labs of Mani Sarathy, who led the work. “Using oil residues as feedstocks for carbon materials is an innovative, high-value application of oil-derived resources, paving the way for economic diversification,” he says.

Carbon fiber is in rising demand throughout many industries as a result of its distinctive properties, together with excessive mechanical energy and sturdiness, low weight, thermal stability, and electrical conductivity. One limiting issue is its excessive price, which may largely be attributed to the costly carbon precursor, polyacrylonitrile (PAN), used to make it.

PAN’s excessive price has prompted a seek for various feedstocks. “Oil residues could offer a cost-effective and abundant alternative,” Guevara says. For his or her analysis, the workforce focused the heaviest, most complicated—and historically, hardest to course of—parts of residual oil, known as asphaltenes and resins.

Beforehand, asphaltenes have been trialed as carbon fiber feedstocks. Nonetheless, efforts to spin these supplies into fibers had been restricted by their tendency to interrupt, and the carbon fiber yield from the ultimate carbonization warmth therapy step was comparatively low.

“Earlier research of oil residues have urged that resins stabilize asphaltene molecules, highlighting their sturdy molecular affinity,” Guevara says. “This led us to hypothesize that mixing asphaltenes with resins may create a synergistic feedstock for carbon fiber manufacturing.”

Published in Gasolinethe workforce confirmed that the mix supplied a number of benefits over asphaltenes alone as carbon fiber feedstocks. It had higher movement traits and could possibly be spun at a lower temperaturelowering vitality consumption. The workforce additionally noticed fewer strand breakages throughout spinning and attained the next yield after the carbonization step.

“This improves the viability of the process by maximizing the conversion of the precursor material into the final carbon fiber product,” Guevara says.

The ensuing carbon fibers had been additionally of top of the range. “The properties of our fibers are comparable to those of ‘isotropic carbon fibers,” that are generally utilized in functions requiring moderate-to-high mechanical efficiency,” Guevara says.

“Traditionally, oil residues have been used in very low-value applications such as road surfacing. By extracting the heaviest asphaltenes and resins for high-value carbon fiber manufacturing, the remaining residual oils can also be more easily processed to produce cleaner fuels or valuable small molecules, further improving the economics of the process,” Sarathy provides.

The researchers at the moment are fine-tuning the residual oil mix to maximise the chemical interplay between the parts to enhance the fibers’ bodily attributes additional. They’re additionally collaborating with Saudi Aramco to scale up the method.

“Our main goal is to generate high-performance carbon fibers after which scale in direction of an industrial process,” Sarathy says. “This will give Saudi Arabia a unique, economically competitive product that can be marketed globally.”