Carbon Black Research Paper

PRODUCTION OF PRINTING INK AND SHOE POLISH FROM NIGERIAN, LOCALLY PRODUCED CARBON BLACK.

LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 CARBON BLACK Carbon black can be defined as a black powdery substance obtained from the burning of hydrocarbons in limited amount of oxygen, a process called pyrolysis. (Eric L Crump, May 2000; J. Schaefer, March 1996; Donnet J., R. Bansal, and M. Wang, 1993)

The implication of this process is that it does not come about naturally; hence, carbon black does not occur as a natural product. It is more of an organic substance than in organic as it contains 90-99% of elemental carbon, 0.2-0.5% of hydrogen and minute percentage of mineral impurities.

It is also known as pigment black which is used as colouring agent for printing inks,

10 – 80 nanometre of carbon black is delivered using this process. The raw material (i.e. liquid /gaseous hydrocarbon) is heated in the reactor at high temperature partially using fuel oil, confined in a furnace producing carbon black. It entails the use of the gaseous or liquid hydrocarbon in form of petroleum oil or coal oil as raw material (feedstock) in order for a reaction to take place producing carbon black and gas stream which is eventually separated by filters after cooling. The unwanted material in form of gas stream is separated from carbon black after being cooled using heat exchanger. The essence of cooling is to form spherical pellets which will be completely dried using the rotary

Particle sizes range from 120 – 500 nanometre which is quite high compared to other methods are delivered. Feed stock is natural gas. It also entails heating the natural gas in the absence of oxygen. Two reactors are being used in this process. The first reactor is heated to a temperature of about 13000C with the natural gas fed into the reactor and eventually producing both carbon-black and hydrogen as by-products. When this is achieved, the carbon black and hydrogen mixture is cooled with water, and then fed into the second reactor. Carbon black is then obtained after separation with the aid of