Carbonization of hot-pressed ARBOFORM A®-mixtures

Porous carbon materials have a wide range of technical applications due to their properties including low density potential, mechanical capacity, resistance to heat and corrosion as well as electric conductivity. Organic materials like phenolic resins or polyacrylnitrile are typically employed as green body for carbon ceramics. However, wood and especially wood-based composites are also suitable as well as hot-pressed ARBOFORM(A (R))-powder mixtures from lignin, wood meal and natural additives, which varied with regard to their lignin content as well as partly regarding their additive rates. The objective of the present study was to investigate the influence of some admixed additives of a commercially available wood based composite on carbonization results. The experiment was performed due to its more homogenous material properties in comparison to solid wood. Another aspect was the possibility of forming mixtures of ARBOFORM(A (R)) by extrusion or injection moulding. Such production processes are already state of the technology and therefore it could be possible to produce complex carbon- and ceramic templates which are difficult to realize by conventional processing methods. Concerning the thermoplastic process step of ARBOFORM(A (R)) there are further advantages compared with the used wood based panels. The samples were pyrolyzed in a nitrogen atmosphere at a temperature of up to 900 A degrees C. Regarding the absence of cracks, best results were achieved with blend P60 which had a higher content of wood particles. Addition of only 10% of phenolic resin significantly counteracted density reduction.