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Title: Novel catalytic methods for heteroatom removal in coal liquids upgrading. Quarterly report No. 2, December 1, 1983-March 1, 1984

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:5088022

The goal of this project is to optimize the conditions for the coal liquefaction stage of coal refinement. This work is divided into three tasks; this quarter we report the results of our work on the first two tasks. In Task 1 we concentrated on baseline studies designed to establish the role of hydrogen sulfide in the absence of catalyst. We also established some baseline conditions for a commercial (Harshaw) HDN catalyst based on (1) method of catalyst activation (with and without sulfiding), (2) quantity of catalyst added, and (3) quantities of coal liquid used in our reactor configuration. We found that without catalyst, H/sub 2/S/H/sub 2/ has no effect on the coal liquid under upgrading conditions. However, when H/sub 2/S/H/sub 2/ is used with catalyst, the nitrogen content in the coal liquid is significantly reduced when compared with runs with catalyst and H/sub 2/ alone. In no case did we observe any sulfur incorporation. In a complementary study, partly funded by EPRI, we studied the interaction of H/sub 2/S with potential coal model compounds and with coal. From the work on coal models we found that H/sub 2/S promotes hydrogen transfer from tetralin to the models or to coal and aids in removing oxygen from the coal models. We also found that the addition of H/sub 2/S aids in the liquefaction of coal. We will submit the results of our work to Fuel. Abstracts of the manuscripts (in preparation) are attached (Appendix A). In Task 2 we began the synthesis of some organometallic molybdenum cluster complexes. We also investigated the mechanism of the HDN process with the Harshaw catalyst and quinoline as a model. We reported our proposed mechanism at the California Catalysis Society Conference of March 23, 1984. The abstract of the talk is given in Appendix B. We will shortly submit a paper on our results to the Journal of Molecular Catalysis. 5 references, 2 figures, 3 tables.

Research Organization:
SRI International, Menlo Park, CA (USA)
DOE Contract Number:
FG22-83PC60781
OSTI ID:
5088022
Report Number(s):
DOE/PC/60781-T1; ON: DE84008547
Resource Relation:
Other Information: Portions are illegible in microfiche products
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English