Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochem. Eng. Aspects 471 (2015) 124–132 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects j ourna l h om epa ge: www.elsevier.com/locate/colsurfa Influence of the textural parameters of resorcinol–formaldehyde dry polymers and carbon xerogels on particle sizes upon mechanical milling Marie-Laure C. Piedboeuf a , Alexandre F. Léonard a,∗ , Karl Traina b , Nathalie Job a a Laboratory of Chemical Engineering – Nanomaterials, Catalysis, Electrochemistry – Institute of Chemistry (B6a), University of Liège, B-4000 Liège, Belgium b Advanced Powder Technologies and Innovative Solutions–Institute of Chemistry (B6a), University of Liège, B-4000 Liège, Belgium h i g h l i g h t s • Porous carbons were ground into powders with retention of meso- porosity. • Ball-milling before pyrolysis could avoid surface chemistry issues. • Laser granulometry and SEM were used to evaluate particle sizes. • Mercury porosimtery was used to evaluate both pore diameters and particle sizes. • Particles around 10 m were obtained for a wide range of carbon xerogels pore sizes. g r a p h i c a l a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 5 December 2014 Received in revised form 28 January 2015 Accepted 6 February 2015 Available online 14 February 2015 Keywords: Mesoporous carbons Ball-milling Particle size control Mercury intrusion porosimetry a b s t r a c t Porous carbons find various applications in catalysis, electrochemical storage or sorption. Prior to use, their particle sizes need however to be controlled according to the targeted application. In this study, the grinding behavior of materials prepared from aqueous resorcinol–formaldehyde mixtures and displaying different pore textures was studied in detail. Both dry polymer gels and pyrolyzed carbon xerogels were compared in terms of particle size distributions after planetary ball-milling. The results show that the pore texture and the qualitative hardness of the materials have a strong influence on the grinding behavior, especially if carbon xerogels pyrolyzed before grinding are considered. On the other hand, it appears that the milling of polymer gels, followed by a pyrolysis step, is the most efficient way to obtain homogeneous particle size distributions, for all of the investigated mesopore textures. In this case, carbon particles displaying a narrow grain size distribution centered on a mode value near 10 m are successfully obtained after similar grinding durations, with retention of the mesopore texture of the starting materials. This work also demonstrates the possibility of using mercury intrusion porosimetry as an interesting tool to assess simultaneously the mesopore dimensions and the particle sizes of porous powders. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +32 4 366 4875. E-mail address: alexandre.leonard@ulg.ac.be (A.F. Léonard). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.colsurfa.2015.02.014 0927-7757/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.