Research progress on preparation and development of coal-based general-purpose carbon fiber

General-purpose carbon fiber (GPCF) has the advantages of low cost compared to polyacrylonitrile-based carbon fiber and mesophase pitch-based carbon fiber; however, the poor strength performance limits its application to low value-added fields, building reinforcement for example.Thus, the balance between controlling preparation cost and improving strength performance has been the focus of GPCF development.The selection of raw materials and the improvement of synthesis of pitch precursors are deemed as the potential approaches to solve the above problems.Coal and its by-products of coal processing are main raw materials for preparing different types of carbon fibers.Taking the energy structure characteristics of China into account, it would be significant for the development of carbon fiber industry of our homeland by studying and developing an effective and feasible method for coal-based GPCF production.In the work, the preparation study of coal-based GPCF was the main topic, the types and pretreatment methods, as well as properties of raw materials, were summarized first, and the preparation methods of pitch precursor were reviewed then including thermal condensation, co-carbonization, hydrogenation polymerization, and halogenation-dehydrohalogenation.In the future, the attention of GPCF development should be on the controllable synthesis of pitch precursors to improve its strength performance instead of changing raw materials and synthetic conditions only.