Fabrication and Physical Properties of Organic and Carbon Aerogel Derived from Phenol and Furfural

Phenol can be used as a cheap raw material to prepare organic and carbon aerogels based upon the gelation and supercritical drying in ethanol. In addition, organic and carbon aerogels could also be obtained by directly drying phenol-furfural alco-gels at ambient pressure under proper preparation conditions. The effect of the preparation conditions, such as the phenol-furfural (PF) concentration, the mass ratio of HCl to phenol (HCl/P), the mole ratio of phenol to furfural (P/F) and the gelation temperature, on the gelation ability and the bulk density was studied. The aerogels obtained have a three-dimensional network that consists of approximately 20 nm particles, which define numerous mesopores with diameter less than 50 nm. Organic aerogels obtained have high BET surface areas of 267–503 m/g and large mesopore volumes of 0.657–2.734 cm/g. Carbonization generates numerous micropores of ca. 0.45 nm in diameters but impairs to some extent the mesopore structure. As a result, carbon aerogels have high BET surface areas of 507–561 m/g, large micropore volumes of 0.106–0.168 cm/g and small mesopore volumes of 0.505–0.710 cm/g relative to their organic aerogel precursors. XRD characterization indicates that carbon aerogels are more crystalline than activated carbon but less than graphite.