Preparation of activated carbon fibers from mixtures of cotton and polyester fibers

Activated carbon fiber (ACF) is a novel material that is attracting increasing research attention. Specifically, ACF production from fiber mixtures is considered as a useful approach to reuse waste cloth and fibers. However, extant studies did not thoroughly investigate the use of the fore-mentioned mixtures in ACF preparation. In the present study, we describe ACF preparation from mixtures of cotton and polyester fibers and discuss solutions for a problem encountered during preparation. We attempted to determine a non-destructive method by using gray-scale intensities of the ACF images. The method is potentially promising, and we expect that it can be used for adsorption evaluations after further improvements.