Efficient Production of Carbon Nanofibers from a Trace Amount of Iron Using the Liquid Pulse Injection Technique

摘要

Carbon nanofibers (CNFs) have many unique properties, therefore the demand for this material is rapidly increasing. However, the development of a highly efficient system for CNF production still remains as a challenge. Previously, we introduced a new method to efficiently produce CNFs, the Liquid Pulse Injection (LPI) technique [1-3]. The main feature of this method is the introduction of a mixture of the catalyst and fiber source into the reactor as liquid pulses. Such liquid pulse introduction enables the generation of extremely active catalyst particles in a highly dense state. Long and fairly uniform CNFs can be produced at carbon yields exceeding 80% by using this method. We also experimentally showed that CNFs can be obtained at high yields from inexpensive carbon sources, such as crude benzene. This means that the production cost of CNFs now mainly depends on the cost of the catalyst source.