Alternative Binder for Carbon Anode

Coal tar pitch (CTP) is traditionally used as binder material for the manufacturing of carbon anode. Worldwide, researchers are exploring alternate materials of CTP due to its limited availability as well as high polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) content. Key requirements from a binder material for making a good quality anode are coking value (CV), quinoline insoluble (QI) content, viscosity, and wettability. In this study, petroleum pitch (PP) is blended with CTP in different proportions for making lab-scale anodes. Results showed adequate anode properties till 20% blending of petroleum pitch. Further increase in blending ratio deteriorates the anode properties such as baked anode density and compressive strength due to low CV and QI content of petroleum pitch. To improve the QI content in samples with higher proportions of petroleum pitch, appropriate additives were added. The result of this analysis is also discussed in this paper.