Carbon fibre from Victorian lignite

Carbon fibre (CF), as a high value-added carbon material, is one of the strongest and lightweight materials available today. Its popularity against traditional materials such as steel and aluminium in aerospace, civil engineering, the military, automotive and sports equipment industries is increasing because of its high rigidity, tensile strength and chemical resistance combined with low weight. Victorian lignite (VL), with its inherently low N, low S and low ash content, is arguably the cleanest coal in the world. It has lower levels of these ‘impurities’ even than most forms of biomass. Since impurities often become concentrated in the product materials, VL is, from this perspective, a near ideal naturally occurring precursor material for all sorts of carbon products. VL is also a very cheap precursor material by virtue of its massive accumulation in large deposits that are mined by open cut methods. Moreover, its significant resemblance to lignin makes it highly prospective as a CF precursor. Current work is studying methods of obtaining a material suitable for producing CF from VL. Several precursors have been produced from VL, then subjected to electro-spinning and wet-spinning to make the raw fibres.