Summary Report of the DOE Direct Liquefaction Process Development Campaign of the Late Twentieth Century: Topical Report.

摘要

Following the petroleum price and supply disruptions of 1973, the U.S. government began a substantial program to fund the development of alternative fuels. Direct coal liquefaction was one of the potential routes to alternative fuels. The direct coal liquefaction program was funded at substantial levels through 1982, and at much lower levels thereafter. Those processes that were of most interest during this period were designed to produce primarily distillate fuels. By 1999, U.S. government funding for the development of direct coal liquefaction ended. Now that the end of this campaign has arrived, it is appropriate to summarize the process learnings derived from it. This report is a summary of the process learnings derived from the DOE direct coal liquefaction process development campaign of the late twentieth century. The report concentrates on those process development programs that were designed to produce primarily distillate fuels and were largely funded by DOE and its predecessors in response to the petroleum supply and price disruptions of the 1970s. The report is structured as chapters written by different authors on most of the major individual DOE-funded process development programs. The focus of the report is process learnings, as opposed to, say, fundamental coal liquefaction science or equipment design. As detailed in the overview (Chapter 2), DOEs direct coal liquefaction campaign made substantial progress in improving the process yields and the quality of the distillate product. Much of the progress was made after termination by 1983 of the major demonstration programs of the 'first generation' (SRC-II, H-Coal, EDS) processes.