Pitch is an attractive raw material for carbon fiberprecursors due to its low cost stemming from its availability as a residue of coking and petroleum processes. Ford Motor Company reported a carbon fibertarget price of 11.0/kg by using a fast cycle-time manufacturing method with carbon fiberin an inexpensive format, allowing for an average retail price of gasoline of 3.58/gallon. They also recommended the use of carbon fiberwith strength of 1700 MPa, modulus of 170 GPa, and 1.5% elongation. This study introduced a ca. 5.5 μm carbon fiberwith 2000 MPa tensile strength obtained from a precursor through simple distil-lation of petroleum residue. Petroleum pitch based carbon nanofibersprepared via electros-pinning were characterized and potential applications were introduced on the basis of their large specific surface area and relatively high electrical conductivity.

This paper reports the effect of adding reduced graphene oxide (RGO) as a conductive material to the composition of an electrode for capacitive deionization (CDI), a process to remove salt from water using ionic adsorption and desorption driven by external applied voltage. RGO can be synthesized in an inexpensive way by the reduction and exfoliation of GO, and removing the oxygen-containing groups and recovering a conjugated structure. GO powder can be obtained from the modification of Hummers method and reduced into RGO using a thermal method. The physical and electrochemical characteristics of RGO material were evaluated and its desalination performance was tested with a CDI unit cell with a potentiostat and conductivity meter, by varying the applied voltage and feed rate of the salt solution. The performance of RGO was compared to graphite as a conductive material in a CDI electrode. The result showed RGO can increase the capacitance, reduce the equivalent series resistance, and improve the electrosorption capacity of CDI electrode.