Fundamental kinetics of supercritical coal liquefaction: Effect of catalysts and hydrogen-donor solvents. Quarterly technical progress report, October 1994--January 1995

摘要

The authors addressed item 2 listed on the Project Schedule of Proposed Work in the proposal for this project: perform blank runs (coal is absent) with tetralin and with poly (styrene-allyl alcohol) mixed with t-butanol solvent; analyze samples with HPLC gel permeation chromatography; and characterize molecular weight as a continuous distribution. The polymer poly (styrene-allyl alcohol) is a suitable choice for modeling the continuous-flow thermolysis of either coal or petroleum residuum. Thus, the results of this phase of the research could generally apply to both coal liquefaction and coal-residuum coprocessing. The objective is to develop continuous-mixture decomposition reaction kinetics for large reactant molecules that are distributed in molecular weight. The following tasks were completed and the raw data is presently being analyzed by continuous-mixture kinetics: (a) determined a suitable wavelength of the UV spectra (254 nm) to maximize detection resolution of the components in the mixture; (b) examined the effect of various concentrations of tetralin and 1-butanol at four different reaction temperatures (403, 423, 443 and 473 K); (c) studied the effect of tetralin and butanol on the decomposition of poly(styrene-allyl alcohol) at four different reaction temperatures (403, 423, 443 and 473 K), four different tetralin concentrations (5, 10, 25, 50%), and four different polymer concentrations (0.5, 1, 2, and 3 grams/l); and (d) examined the effects of several concentrations of tetralin and toluene at two different reaction temperatures (423 and 473 K), both in presence and absence of the polymer.