Preparation and characterization of carbon foam from castor oil cake

摘要

The present work deals with the development of carbon foam from the natural resource castor oil cake. Using the liquefaction process initially polyol was produced from the castor oil cake and this polyol was used to synthesize phenolic resin. Adopting direct foaming method, the synthesized phenolic resin was mixed with polysorbate-80, N-pentene then this mixer was transferred in the mold which was allowed to keep in the oven at 50 °C to produce foam. This obtained foam was again heated at 160 °C overnight to enhance the degree of cross-linking. Different properties of the foam were derived using various characterization methods.