Coloured wastewater is released as a direct result of the production of dyes as well as from various other chemical industries. Many dyes and their breakdown products may be toxic for living organisms. Activated carbon is one of the best materials for removal of dyes from aqueous solutions. The present study describes the adsorption behaviour of methylene blue dye on three microporous activated carbons, where two samples (AC-1 and AC-2) were prepared by a polymer blend technique and the other is a microporous activated carbon (ARY-3) sample from viscose rayon yarn prepared by chemical-physical activation. The effects of contact time and activated carbon dosage on decolourisation capacity have been studied. The results show that activated carbon having mixed microporosity and mesoporosity show tremendous decolourisation capacity for methylene blue. In addition, the activated carbon in the powder form prepared by the polymer blend technique shows better decolourisation capacity for methylene blue than the activated rayon yarn sample.

Activated carbons are well known as adsorbents for gases and vapors. Micro porous carbons are used for the sorption/separation of light gases, whereas, carbon with bigger pore size are applied for removal of large molecules. Therefore, the control of pore size of activated carbon plays a vital role for their use in specific applications. In the present work, steam activation parameters have been varied to control pore size of the resulting activated carbon. It was found that flow rate of steam has profound effect on both surface characteristic and surface morphology. The flow rate of steam was optimized to retain monolith structure as well as higher surface area.

The application of Carbon and graphite based materials in unprotected environment is limited to a temperature of 450℃ or so because of their susceptibility to oxidation at this temperature and higher. To over come these obstacles a low cost chemical vapour reaction process (CVR) was developed to give crystalline and high purity SiC coating on graphite and isotropic C/C composite. CVR is most effective carbothermal reduction method for conversation of a few micron of carbon layer to SiC. In the CVR method, a sic conversation layer is formed by reaction between carbon and gaseous reagent silicon monoxide at high temperature. Characterization of SiC coating was carried out using SEM. The other properties studied were hardness density and conversion efficiency.

Microporous carbons with narrow pore size distribution have been successfully synthesized by using hydrolyzed and calcined silica as templates and phenol formaldehyde (pf) resin as carbon precursor. Phenol formaldehyde-silica micro composites were prepared by solution route. Subsesequently, silica templates were removed by HF leaching. Resulting carbons were steam activated. The porous carbons were characterized by nitrogen adsorption-desorption isotherm, SEM, FTIR analysis, iodine adsorption, thermogravimetry analysis, etc. Adsorption isotherms show that the porous carbon prepared from calcined silica as templates are microporous with 88% pores of size <2 nm porosity and are of type I isotherm, while porous carbon prepared by using hydrolyzed silica are microporous with 89% microporosity, shows hysteresis loop at high relative pressure indicating the presence of some mesoporosity in samples. The microporosity in porous carbon materials has a bearing on the nature of silica templates used for pore formation.

Carbon-ceramic composites were fabricated by using fly ash and PANOX fibers as reinforcement. Fly ash, because of its small size particles e.g. submicron to micron level can be effectively dispersed along with fibrous reinforcements. Phenolic resin was used as carbon precursor. Both dry as well as wet methods were used for forming composites. The resulting composites were characterized for their microstructure, thermal and mechanical properties. The microstructure and mechanical properties of composites are found to be dependent on type of the fly ash, fibrous reinforcements as well as processing parameters. The addition of fly ash improves hardness and the fibers, which get co-carbonized on heat treatment, increase the flexural strength of the carbon-ceramic composites. Composites with dual reinforcement exhibit about 30-40% higher strength as compared to the composites made with single reinforcement, either with fly ash as filler or with chopped fibers.

The work reported in this paper relates to preparation and characterization of carbon nanomaterials by CVD method on different substrates by decomposition of certain hydrocarbons at 550-800℃ using a horizontal quartz tube reactor. Monometallic and bimetallic catalyst system of iron and nickel were used for the preparation of different carbon nanomaterials. The influence of various parameters such as substrate/catalyst preparation parameters, the nature of substrate, catalyst concentration, reaction time and temperature on the growth, yield and alignment of carbon nanotubes has been studied. The characterization of carbon nanomaterials has been carried out using SEM, TEM and TGA. The carbon nanomaterials developed were vertically aligned on a large area of flat quartz substrate.

The study of mechanical properties and fracture behaviour of carbon/carbon composites is significant to its application and development. These are dependent on microstructure and properties of reinforcing fibers and matrix, fiber/matrix interface and porosity/cracks present in the composites. In the present studies high-density carbon/carbon composites have been prepared using PAN and various pitch based carbon fibers as reinforcements and pitch as matrix with repeated densification cycles using high-pressure impregnation and carbonization technique. Scanning electron microscopy has been used to study the fracture behaviour of the highly dense composites and correlated with structure of the composites. The geometry of reinforcement and presence of unfilled voids/cracks was found to influence the path of crack propagation and thereby the strength of composites. The type of stresses (tensile or compressive) accumulated also plays an important role in fracture of composites.