2008, Vol.9, No.2

Carbon Letters 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.35 KCI-WoS Impact Factor : 6.04

pISSN : 1976-4251 / eISSN : 2233-4998
https://journal.kci.go.kr/carbon

In the present study Sisal fiber obtained from the leaves of Agave sisalana has been chosen to validate its viability as anadsorption of Nickel was also studied. Agave sisalana fiber was found to be a cheap and effective adsorbent doing away withthe need to activate the material therby reducing processing cost. The equilibrium studies indicated that the adsorptioncapacity of raw fiber and the surface modified fiber was 8.66 and 9.77 mg/g respectively with the Langmuir isothermdescribing the adsorption phenomena better than the Freundlich and Temkin isotherm. The adsorption was found to beexothermic from the thermodynamic studies and the kinetics showed that the adsorption phenomena were second order.

In this work, we employed an electroless nickel plating on glass fibers in order to enhance the electric conductivity offibers. And the effects of metal content and plating time on the conductivity of fibers were investigated. From the results,island-like metal clusters were found on the fiber surfaces in initial plating state, and perfect metallic layers were observedcconductivity showed similar trends. The nickel cluster sizes on fibers decreased with increasing plating time, indicating thatsurface energetics of the fibers could become more homogeneous and make well-packed metallic layers, resulting in the highconductivity of Ni/glass fibers.

We have demonstrated the feasibility of using electrospinning method to fabricate long and continuous composite nanofiberan important step toward utilizing carbon nanofibers (CNFs) as materials to achieve remarkably enhanced physico-chemicalproperties. In an attempt to derive these advantages, we have used a variety of techniques such as field emission scanningelectron microscopy (FE-SEM), transmision electron microscopy (TEM) and high resolution X-ray diffraction (HR-XRD) toobtain quantitative data on the materials. The CNFs produced are in the diameter range of 10 to 350 nm after carbonizationat 1000˚C. Electrical conductivity of the random CNFs was increased by increasing the concentration of ZnO. A dramaticimprovement in porosity and specific surface area of the CNFs was a clear evidence of the novelty of the method used. Thisphysico-chemical properties.