Spinnable mesophase pitch precursor containing more than 98% mesophase content was successfully prepared from FCC-DO (fluid catalytic cracking-decant oil) without hydrogenation or catalytic reaction. The preparation method involved thermal condensation, vacuum treatment, and annealing treatment. Petroleum mesophase pitch-based carbon fibers are produced by melt spinning of pitch precursors, followed by stabilization and carbonization. The resulting carbon fiber exhibited good mechanical performances up to tensile strength of 2.1 GPa and tensile modulus of 212 GPa, with strain-to-failure higher than 1.0%. These properties ensuring that the automotive grade carbon fibers can be successfully prepared from FCC-DO derived petroleum mesophase pitches through the cost-competitive processes.

Isotropic pitch-based carbon fiber was successfully prepared from tetrahydrofuran-soluble fraction of coal tar pitch cocarbonization with petrolatum by air-blowing. The effects of reaction temperature and time, amount of petrolatum added on the composition and spinning properties of resultant pitches were investigated. It indicated that petrolatum could effectively improve the softening point, aromaticity, hydrogen content and molecular weight of the resultant pitches by promoting cross-linking and dehydrogenation polymerization reactions at low air-blowing temperature. Moreover, more aliphatic and naphthenic structures had been introduced into resultant pitches as addition of petrolatum and also inhibited the generation of quinoline-insoluble particles. The obtained green fibers were facile to be stabilized and carbonized and the resultant carbon fibers showed fully isotropic and finer, uniform diameter with smooth surface and higher tensile strength of up to 0.92 GPa. It provided a facile chemical modification method for isotropic pitch-based carbon fiber production.

In this study, pitch crosslinked by oxygen function groups was made into activated carbon (AC) and pore structure was observed. The oxygen functional groups were introduced by the addition of waste PET for pitch synthesis. Activation agent ratios used to obtain the AC during the activation process were 1:1, 1:2 and 1:4 (pitch:KOH, w/w). The oxygen content in the prepared pitch was characterized by elemental analysis. Also, the molecular weight of pitch was investigated by MALDITOF. Specific surface area and micropore volume of the prepared AC were determined by the argon adsorption–desorption analysis and calculated using the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller and Horvath–Kawazoe equations, respectively. Micropore fraction of PET-free AC was smaller than that of PET-added AC. At high activation agent ratio, mesopores were created when the micropore structure collapsed. However, in the PET-added AC, due to the oxygen crosslinking effect, the micropore structure and micropore size were maintained even at a high activation agent ratio. Therefore, PET AC was found to have a higher micropore fraction than that of PET-free AC.

Structural characterization of pyrolysis fuel oil (PFO) was conducted via 1H NMR and 13C NMR to elucidate its molecular structure and evaluate the feasibility of using PFO as a raw material for mesophase pitch synthesis. The average structural parameters were calculated based on the data from elemental analysis and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS), as well as 1H NMR and 13C NMR data. The resultant structural features of PFO were compared with those of fluidized catalytic cracking-decant oil (FCC-DO). Based on the calculated parameters, we proposed average molecular models of PFO and FCC-DO. The molecular model of PFO showed that it had an aromatic structure consisting of three aromatic rings and one naphthenic ring fused with one pericondensed and two catacondensed aromatic carbons, as well as a short alkyl side chain (with only a methyl group). This structural feature of PFO demonstrated that it is highly favorable for use as a raw material for mesophase pitch synthesis. The empirical findings in this study provide an in-depth understanding of the molecular structure of PFO as well as FCC-DO and can offer insights for future research on the utilization of PFO and other petroleum heavy oils.

The mesophase pith was synthesized based on effects of a high-pressure thermal condensation and feed (PFO/FCC-DO) blending. The reaction conditions were designed by fluidity and reactivity of each feed during the thermal reaction. The high-pressure thermal condensation process disturbs distillation of the volatile compounds in pyrolysis fuel oil (PFO); the fluidity can be controlled. In the blending process, PFO, which has a high thermal condensation reactivity, and fluid catalytic cracking-decant oil (FCC-DO), which maintains fluidity, interacted with a synergistic effect. Thus, mesophase pitch with a large mesophase content was manufactured by the two above processes.

Pitch precursors affording excellent spinnability, high-level oxidation-resistance, and good carbonization yields were prepared by bromination–dehydrobromination of various ratios of pyrolyzed fuel oil and coal tar pitch. The pitches exhibited spinnabilities that were much better than those of pitches prepared via simple distillation. A pitch prepared using a 1:2 ratio of fuel oil and coal tar pitch exhibited the best tensile strength. Pitch fibers of diameter 8.9 ± 0.1 μm were stabilized at 270 °C without soaking time after heating at a rate of 0.5 °C/min and carbonized at 1100 °C for 1 h after heating at 5 °C/min. The resulting carbon fibers exhibited a tensile strength, elongation, Young’s modulus, and average diameter of 1700 ± 170 MPa, 1.6 ± 0.1%, 106 ± 37 GPa, and 7.1 ± 0.2 μm, respectively.

residue as the raw material. As one of the preconceived raw material to produce high-quality coal-based carbon material, the changes of structure of CLP during liquid-phase carbonization process have been detailed investigated in this study. Actually, FTIR and curve-fitted method were used to quantitative analyze the aromaticity index (Iar), the ratio of CH3/ CH2, and basic functional groups (C=C, C=O, and C–O) of CLP and its liquid-phase carbonization products. Polarizing microscope, XRD and curve-fitted methods were used to characterize the microstructures of CLP and derived products. The results show that, branched chain and C=O group are the active reaction point in liquid-phase carbonization process. What’s more, 450 °C is a critical temperature point on the severe thermal polycondensation of CLP. The XRD and curve-fitted analysis of CLP and its liquid-phase carbonization products shows that, the stacking height (Lc), parallel layers (N), and the numbers of aromatic ring in each layer (n) are gradually larger with the improve of liquid-phase carbonization temperature.

Modified pitch A (MPA) and modified pitch B (MPB) were prepared by oxidative polymerization and thermal polycondensation reaction with refined pitch as the raw material, respectively. The toluene soluble components (TS-1 and TS-2) were obtained by solvent extraction from MPA and MPB, separately. The Flynn-Wall-Ozawa method and Kissinger-Akahira- Sunose method were used to calculate the pyrolysis activation energy of TS. The Satava- Sestak method was used to investigate the pyrolysis kinetic parameters of TS. Moreover, the optical microstructure of the thermal conversion products (TS-1-P and TS-2-P) by calcination shows that TS-1-P has more contents of mosaic structure and lower contents of fine fiber structure than TS-2-P. The research result obtained by a combination of X-ray diffraction and the curve-fitting method revealed that the ratios of ordered carbon crystallite (Ig) in TS-1-P and TS-2-P were 0.3793 and 0.4417, respectively. The distributions of carbon crystallite on TS-1-P and TS-2-P were calculated by Raman spectrum and curve-fitting analysis. They show that the thermal conversion product of TS-2 has a better graphite crystallite structure than TS-1.

In this paper, Fly robot with electric power, a kind of Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), is considered as an autonomous hovering platform, capable of vertical lift-off, landing and stationary hovering. This aircraft has four rotor and DC motors of electrical Power, which is capable of Omni-direction for indoor application. In the earlier days of vertical flight experimentation developers looked at the intuitively easy control functionality of 4 rotor designs. But we need to obtain design method of suitable structures and adequate components because the existing prototypes of 4 rotor-craft don't analyze the propeller, motor characteristic and propose a methodology to optimize this system. In design of propeller, experimental results show that thrust and power are relatively efficient at a pitch angel of 20 degree. To the conclusion, the design method and optimization method of the propeller, motor, frame, Blimp, which are the main design elements of the blimp type 4 rotor craft, were studied to optimize the existing Blimp 4 rotor craft body design method.

The study extends the body of literature in marketing finance interface (Luo, 2008; Srinivasan & Hanssens, 2009), and specifically new venture funding (Homburg et al., 2014) by investigating the influence of characteristics of entrepreneurial team on pitch success. More specifically, we investigate the impact of first impressions and entrepreneur appearance on acquiring venture capital. To do this, this study examines the impact of first impressions and entrepreneurial appearance on financing outcomes using a large sample of real investment pitches from a major European startup event. Here, non-investors on Amazon’s MTurk are given a task to rate entrepreneurial pitches on three dimensions: the appearance of competence, trustworthiness and attractiveness and test whether these ratings are associated with the probability of a company receiving early-stage investment. Companies run by entrepreneurs who are rated as one-standard-deviation more competent looking are almost 20% more likely to receive funding. The other measures of appearance, such as the appearance of trustworthiness and attractiveness as well as an overall “Perception”-measure (which averages all three ratings) also have some predictive power. All in all, the evidence suggests that first impressions and appearance can lead to improved financing outcomes for startups despite the extensive due diligence that goes into early-stage investments.

We examined the pressure effects on petroleum pitch synthesis by using open and closed reaction systems. The pressure effects that occur during the pitch synthesis were investigated in three pressure systems: a closed system of high pressure and two open systems under either an atmosphere or vacuum. A thermal reaction in the closed system led to the high product yield of a pitch by suppressing the release of light components in pyrolysis fuel oil. Atmospheric treatment mainly enhanced the polymerization degree of the pitch via condensation and a polymerization reaction. Vacuum treatment results in a softening point increase due to the removal of components with low molecular weights. To utilize such characteristic effects of system pressure during pitch preparations, we proposed a method for synthesizing cost-competitive pitch precursors for carbon materials. The first step is to increase product yield by using a closed system; the second step is to increase the degree of polymerization toward the desired molecular distribution, followed by the use of vacuum treatment to adjust softening points. Thus, we obtained an experimental quinoline insolubles-free pitch of product yield over 45% with softening points of approximately 130°C. The proposed method shows the possibility to prepare cost-competitive pitch precursors for carbon materials by enhancing product yield and other properties.

In this study, we tried to prepare an isotropic spinnable pitch which can be useful to prepare the general purpose carbon fiber through the co-carbonization of biomass tar with ethylene bottom oil under two different preparation methods (atmospheric distillation, pressurized distillation). The results showed that the ethylene bottom oil added co-carbonization was very effective to decrease of the oxygen contents for obtaining a stable spinnable pitch. The pressurized distillation was more effective to reduce the oxygen functional groups of pitches than atmospheric distillation. The obtained spinnable pitch by the pressurized distillation showed higher pitch yield of 42% and lower oxygen content of 9.12% than the spinnable pitch by the atmospheric distillation. The carbon fiber derived from the pressurized distillation spinnable pitch by carbonization at 800ºC for 5 min showed that the higher tensile strength of carbon fiber was increased up to 800 MPa.

Pyrolyzed fuel oil (PFO) and coal tar was blended in the feedstock to produce pitch via thermal reaction. The blended feedstock and produced pitch were characterized to investigate the effect of the blending ratio. In the feedstock analysis, coal tar exhibited a distinct distribution in its boiling point related to the number of aromatic rings and showed higher Conradson carbon residue and aromaticity values of 26.6% and 0.67%, respectively, compared with PFO. The pitch yield changed with the blending ratio, while the softening point of the produced pitch was determined by the PFO ratio in the blends. On the other hand, the carbon yield increased with increasing coal tar ratio in the blends. This phenomenon indicated that the formation of aliphatic bridges in PFO may occur during the thermal reaction, resulting in an increased softening point. In addition, it was confirmed that the molecular weight distribution of the produced pitch was associated with the predominant feedstock in the blend.

In this study, the performance of a small - sized wave heat exchanger to be applied to the white smoke reduction system was experimentally confirmed. The heat transfer rate, drain and pressure drop were measured according to the air flow rate, water flow rate and relative humidity change of the wave heat exchanger for two kinds of pitch numbers. A constant temperature and humidity calorimeter and a constant temperature water bath were used to measure the performance of the wave heat exchanger. The heat transfer rate and drain increased gradually with changes of water flow rate. Case 2 showed more than 50% higher heat transfer rate and drain than Case 1. The increase of air heat transfer rate and drain according to air flow rate was greatly increased when the number of pitches was the same or increased, unlike the result of water flow rate change. In the temperature visualization using a thermal imaging camera, it can be seen that as the water flow rate and the number of pitches increase, the heat transfer becomes more effective in Case 2.

Polyacrylonitrile/pitch nanofibers were prepared by electrospinning as a precursor for a gas sensor material. Pitch nanofibers were properly fabricated by incorporating polyacrylonitrile as an electrospinning supplement component. Polyacrylonitrile/pitch nanofibers were activated with steam at various temperatures followed by subsequent carbonization to make carbon nanofibers with a highly conductive graphitic structure. Steam activation was effective in facilitating gas adsorption onto the carbon nanofibers due to the increased surface area. The carbon nanofibers activated at 800°C had a larger surface area and a lower micro pore fraction resulting in a higher variation in electrical resistance for improved CO gas sensing properties.

We demonstrated an effective way of preparing melt spinnable mesophase pitches via catalytic hydrogenation of petroleum residue (fluidized catalytic cracking-decant oil) and their subsequent thermal soaking. The mesophase pitches thus obtained were analyzed in terms of their viscosity, elemental composition, solubility, molecular weight, softening point and optical texture. We found that zeolite-induced catalytic hydrogenation under high hydrogen pressure contributed to a large variation in the properties of the pitches. As the hydrogen pressure increased, the C/H ratio decreased, and the solubility in n-hexane increased. The mesophase pitch with entirely anisotropic domains of flow texture exhibited good meltspinnability. The mesophase carbon fibers obtained from the catalytically hydrogenated petroleum residue showed moderate mechanical properties.

본 연구에서는 열분해잔사유(Pyrolysis Fuel Oil, PFO)를 이용한 Pitch계 활성탄소섬유를 제조하였다. 제조한 Pitch안정화 섬유의 탄화 및 활성화 온도를 850, 880, 900 ℃로 달리하여 각각 다른 샘플의 기공형성에 대한 영향을 알아보기 위해 BET 와 SEM을 이용하여 비교 분석하였다. 세 가지 샘플 ACF850, ACF880, ACF900를 분석한 결과 ACF880의 비표면적과 미세 기공표면적이 각각 1,420 m2·g-1, 1,270 m2·g-1으로 가장 높았으며, 외부비표면적과 BJH흡착누적공극표면에서 가장 낮은 중기공표면적이 도출되었다. 또한 N2가스 등온흡착곡선을 분석한 결과, 미세기공의 분포가 균일한 것을 확인할 수 있었다. ACF880은 흡착률 및 흡착속도에서도 가장 높은 결과값을 보이며, 흡착속도는 미세기공표면적과 비례하며 중기공표면적과 반비례함을 알 수 있었다. 제조한 Pitch계 활성탄소섬유를 라돈 연속측정방법을 통해 48시간 동안 측정한 결과 샘플 모두 라돈 흡착성능을 보였다. 제 조한 샘플 중 ACF880이 34.0%로 가장 높은 흡착률을 보였으며, ACF850이 29.5%로 가장 낮은 흡착률을 나타내었다. 이는 비표면적이 높을수록 흡착률이 높아지는 것을 알 수 있었다. 이를 선형회귀선 기울기로 환산하여 흡착속도로 확인한 결과 ACF880이 -1.89로 가장 빠른 것을 확인하였으며, ACF900이 -1.48로 가장 낮은 흡착속도를 보여 미세기공표면적이 높을수 록, 중기공표면적이 낮을수록 흡착속도가 증가하는 것을 알 수 있었다.