Mesophase pitch derived carbon foams with high compressive strengths and thermal conductivities as cobalt support

Mesophase pitch-based carbon foams are important materials used to store energy and to control heat because of their attractive compressive strength and thermal conductivity properties. Herein, we present work on the improved compressive strength and thermal conductivity of carbon foams using mesophase pitch as the raw material. The FT-IR, TGA, XRD, BET, Raman spectroscopy, Anton Paar 5000 and SEM-EDS were used to provide the insights into the chemical and structural properties of the foams. The TGA has shown that the synthesized carbon foams are stable at high temperatures of 550 °C. The increase in temperature and pressure increases thermal conductivities and compressive strengths from (38–50 W/mK, 3.92–5.01 MPa) and (28–40 W/mK, 1.93–5.51 MPa) respectively. The opposite trend was observed for variation of pressure release time, as pressure release time increases, thermal conductivities and compressive strength decrease from 35 to 25 W/mK, 4.86–1.79 MPa. The H2-TPR has shown that cobalt is reducible on carbon foam which means its application can be extended to other fields. The ICP-OES and AAS confirmed that cobalt was loaded on carbon foam with 14.8 % and 14.5 % respectively. Carbon foams surface area needs to be tuned for further application in catalysis by applying heat treatments to open pores and increase surface area.