A cheaper, sustainable alternative to carbon fiber
Carbon fiber is a material critical to lightweight structural engineering, prized for its exceptional strength and used often for high-end aerospace. Its high cost and environmental impact, however, limit high-volume applications like automotive manufacturing. That’s due largely to one of the material’s components, a polymer known as polyacrylonitrile (PAN). It’s expensive and working with it is energy intensive. It’s possible to substitute polyacrylonitrile with materials that are less expensive and more environmentally friendly, such as the wood-derived polymer lignin, but this often results in a material that degrades easily.
Researchers in the lab of Professor Liangbing Hu, though, have found a way to upgrade cheaper material into something comparable to carbon fibers. And in doing so, they managed to put the greenhouse gas methane to good use, as well as produce hydrogen as a clean side product. The results are published in Nature Sustainability.
The Solution:
The researchers developed a technique that they applied to a much cheaper material, known as carbon black, to transform it into high-value carbon fibers. They used a method known as pyrolysis, a process of using heat in the absence of oxygen to molecularly break materials down. Using an electrically Joule-heated fibers, they applied the heat—temperatures of 1,700 Kelvin–to methane. Doing so breaks the gas down to its components of hydrogen and solid carbon. The carbon atoms then infuse the pores of the carbon black-based carbon fibers. The carbon deposition results in dramatic densification and refinement of the material.
Hu noted that the research team’s fiber provides a low-cost route while reducing the use of the PAN polymer. Further, it produces hydrogen as a core product.
“Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, but can also be used as a source for advanced carbon materials,” wrote the Nature Sustainability editors. “This work shows a sustainable approach to produce high-value carbon fibers through methane pyrolysis.”
This work was carried out through a multi-institutional collaboration. The collaborating authors include Prof. Chao Wang from Johns Hopkins, Prof. Satish Kumar from Georgia Tech, Prof. Ping Liu from UC San Diego, Prof. Dongxia Liu from the University of Delaware, and Dr. Hongmei Gu from the USDA.
Read the paper
T. Li et al., “Methane pyrolysis-enabled production of high-value carbon fibres,” Nature Sustainability, 2026, 9, 890
More Details
Published Date
Jul 22, 2026
