An engineering model for coal devolatilization: Quarterly report, December 15, 1988--March 15, 1989

Technical Report · Mon May 01 00:00:00 EDT 1989

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/6242936· OSTI ID:6242936

Lau, Chun Wei; Niksa, S.

During this reporting period, we concentrated on our new theory for rapid coal devolatilization. This theory invokes flash distillation driven by competitive kinetics for depolymerization and reattachment to explain the influences of all important operating conditions. Its parameters which describe the initial configuration and molecular structure of coal are related to the structural characteristic which can be inferred from /sup 13/C NMR analyses, so that the theory provides a basis for describing the devolatilization behavior of various coal types. At this point, however, the data correlations are restricted to Pittsburgh Seam HVA bituminous coals, for which data representing very broad variations in the opening conditions are available in the open literature. The data correlations included here represent variations in temperature to 1200K, heating rates from 1 to 10/sup 3/K/s, reaction times at constant temperature to 30 s, and pressures from vacuum to 25 atm. Obviously, such broad variations comprise a stringent validation of the theory, especially since the yields of gas and tar as well as the molecular weight distributions (MWDs)of tar are brought into the evaluations. The progress on the other aspects of this program is also reviewed, but briefly. Here we focus on a phenomenological description of the new devolatilization theory, and the evaluations against measured devolatilization behavior. 11 refs., 5 figs., 1 tab.

• Research Organization: Stanford Univ., CA (USA). High Temperature Gasdynamics Lab.
• DOE Contract Number: FG22-88PC88900
• OSTI ID: 6242936
• Report Number(s): DOE/PC/88900-4; ON: DE89014559
• Resource Relation: Other Information: Portions of this document are illegible in microfiche products
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT
BITUMINOUS COAL
DEVOLATILIZATION
COMBUSTION
CORRELATIONS
DEPOLYMERIZATION
KINETICS
PROGRESS REPORT
TAR
BLACK COAL
CARBONACEOUS MATERIALS
CHEMICAL REACTIONS
COAL
DECOMPOSITION
DOCUMENT TYPES
ENERGY SOURCES
FOSSIL FUELS
FUELS
MATERIALS
ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
OTHER ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
OXIDATION
THERMOCHEMICAL PROCESSES
014000* - Coal
Lignite
& Peat- Combustion