Oxidation Kinetics of Carbon Fibers

Isotropic pitch based carbon fibers were exposed to isothermal oxidation in carbon dioxide gas to study the activation kinetics under the temperature of 800~$1100^{\circ}C$. The kinetic equation $f=1-{\exp}(-at^b)$ was introduced and the constant b was obtained in the range of 0.92~1.25. It was shown that the activated carbon fiber shows the highly specific surface area (SSA) when the constant b comes close to 1. The activation kinetics were evaluated by the reaction-controlling regime (RCR) according to changes of the apparent activation energy with changes of the conversion. It was observed that the activation energies increase from 47.6 to 51.2 kcal/mole with the conversion increasing from 0.2 to 0.8. It was found that the pores of the activated carbon fiber under the chemical reaction were developed well through the fiber.