Silver nitrate (AgNO3) powder was mixed into a reformed pitch precursor. Then, the silver-containing pitch was melt spun to form round and "C" shape fibers. A wire mesh was inserted prior to the nozzle to improve the spinnability of the silvercontaining precursor pitch. Silver particles in the carbon fibers (CFs) were detected by XRD and TEM. These tests showed that silver particles were uniformly distributed and the total amount of silver remained constant during stabilization and carbonization. Next, the silver-containing CFs were activated by steam diluted in nitrogen gas. Silver particles accelerated the activation rate, but the specific surface areas of the silver-containing ACFs were similar to those of non-silver containing ACFs at the same burn-off levels. The specific surface area of the C-shaped activated carbon fibers was larger than that of the round activated carbon fibers. The likely reason is that the surface area of a C-shaped CF is about two times larger than that of a round CF when equivalent cross-sectional areas are compared. A small amount of silver particles in the periphery of the CFs was removed during the activation, but the remainder of silver was stayed within the ACFs.

Coal tar pitch was chemically modified with 10 wt% benzoquinone (BQ) to raise the softening point of isotropic pitch precursor and the precursor was melt-spun into pitch fibers, stabilized, carbonized and activated with steam at 900℃. The weight loss of carbon fiber-benzoquinone (CF-BQ) increased with the increase of activation time like other fibers, but was lower than those of Kureha fiber at the same activation time in spite of larger geometric surface area. Those adsorption isotherms fitted into 'Type I' according to Brunauer, Deming, Deming and Teller classification. However, there was very thin low-pressure hysteresis that lower closure points of the hysteresis are about 0.42-0.45. From the pore size distribution curves, there might be some micropores having narrow-necked bottle; a series of interconnected pore is more likely than discrete bottles. FT-IR studies showed that the functional groups such as carboxyl, quinone, and phenol were introduced to ACFs-BQ surface after steam activation. Methylene blue decolorization and iodine adsorption capacity of ACF-BQ increased linearly with the increase of specific surface area and was larger than that of ACF-Kureha at the same specific surface area.