**5.1 Carbonaceous mesophase-derived coke**

It is well known that pitch-derived coke is mainly used to make carbon and graphite electrodes equipped within electric arc furnaces for steelmaking, and mesophase pitch-derived coke (or needle coke) has an overwhelming advantage to produce graphite electrodes with high and ultrahigh power [5, 20].

It can be clearly seen that mesophase pitch-derived coke exhibits a well-oriented texture as shown in **Figure 13(a, b)**, which is closely related to the formation and development of flow-type liquid crystalline in carbonaceous mesophase products during the process of delayed coking [5]. In contrast, coarse-grained mosaic texture is presented in the coke derived from commercial coal-tar pitch as shown in **Figure 13(c, d)** [16, 20]. Thus it can be concluded that the carbonaceous feedstocks have a significant influence on the optical texture and microstructure of resulting coke, which depends on the development and evolution of carbonaceous mesophase during the liquid-phase carbonization process.

#### **Figure 13.**

*(a, c) Optical photographs and (b, d) PLM micrographs of mesophase pitch-derived coke (a, b) and coal-tar pitch-derived coke (c, d).*

**109**

**Figure 14.**

*Preparation, Characterization, and Applications of Carbonaceous Mesophase: A Review*

**5.3 Carbonaceous mesophase-based porous carbon and carbon foam**

Recently, many researchers have used mesophase pitch as a raw material to prepare porous carbon materials (e.g., ultrahigh surface area activated carbon, mesoporous carbon, and hierarchical porous carbon) with controlled microstructure and morphology [22, 23]. The large specific surface area, rich pore structure and excellent adsorption performance of porous carbon materials provide excellent supporting characteristics for various transition metal and precious metal catalysts. Porous carbon support can resist the severe corrosion in harsh environments such as acid, alkali and salts, and greatly improve the adsorption performance and catalytic

Mesophase pitch-based carbon foam is a new type of porous carbon material prepared by foaming mesophase pitch as shown in **Figure 15**. Owing to its low density, high thermal and electrical conductivity, fire resistance, microwave absorption, noise reduction, low thermal expansion coefficient, chemical resistance, etc., carbon foam is extremely suitable for heat transfer systems, such as aerospace vehicles and satellites, rocket launching platforms, large heat exchangers, and computers in chemical plants [25–27]; therefore, such carbon foam sees promising

*(a) PLM micrograph of anisotropic liquid-crystalline carbonaceous spheres generated from naphthalene-based synthetic pitch and (b) SEM image of homogeneous MCMBs derived from the spherical liquid crystals.*

As a special type of carbon material, MCMB has some outstanding physical and chemical properties that other carbon materials do not have due to its unique spherical morphology and lamellar structure. Therefore, MCMB can be widely applied to various fields, such as high-performance liquid chromatography column materials, high-specific surface area activated carbon materials, high-efficiency lithium ion battery anodes, high-density and high-strength graphite materials, etc. [5, 21]. Under suitable thermal reaction conditions, homogeneous liquid-crystalline spheres with an identical diameter of ~10 μm which appeared in the optically isotropic pitch matrix can be achieved as shown in **Figure 14(a)**, which is closely related to the effective control of the polymerization degree of naphthalene molecules. Through subsequent separation, infusibilization, and carbonization treatments, uniform-sized MCMBs as shown in **Figure 14(b)** can be easily obtained by

**5.2 Carbonaceous mesophase-based mesocarbon microbeads**

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88860*

starting with a simple naphthalene molecule.

efficiency, and thus has broad applications [24].

application prospects.

*Preparation, Characterization, and Applications of Carbonaceous Mesophase: A Review DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88860*
