Synthesis of mesocarbon microbeads from high-temperature coal tar pitch: Effects of quinoline insoluble

Mesocarbon microbeads (MCMBs) were a kind of functional artificial carbon materials, which was widely used in varied areas with its excellent properties. MCMB was generally produced by thermal-polymerization of high-temperature coal tar pitch under oxygen-free atmosphere. Generally, the content of primary quinoline insoluble (PQI) play a key role on the quality of the derived MCMB. In order to confirm the relationship between the content of PQI and the properties of MCMB, 15 kinds of high-temperature coal tar pitch with varied content of PQI were used as the raw materials to produce MCMB. The particle size distribution, optical micro-structure, surface morphology, and carbon micro-crystalline of calcinated MCMB were determined in this work. The results shown that the content of PQI from 7% to 13% was a suitable content to generate high quality MCMB. What is more, the derived MCMB has a high yield of 33.09% with good sphericity, the uniformity index of particle size was 1.02, and the graphite carbon content of calcinated MCMB (calcinated temperature of 1100°C) was 79.92%. Thus, the high-temperature coal tar pitch with the PQI content of 7%–13% was the preferably raw materials to produce high-quality MCMB by thermal-polymerization method.