99/00390 Catalytic synthesis of high-value chemicals and materials from coal

Abstract

This paper gives an account of the authors` recent experimental studies on catalytic synthesis of value-added organic chemicals, monomers for advanced polymer materials, and graphitic materials. Not only does carbon dominate the elemental composition of coal, but for most coals the major fraction of that carbon is already in aromatic structures. Thus coal may be a better feedstock for aromatic chemicals than alternative feedstocks in which much of the carbon is aliphatic. Liquids derived from coal carbonization, gasification (tar) and liquefaction contain numerous aromatic compounds. Many of the 1 to 4-ring aromatic and polar compounds can be converted into valuable chemicals. The authors will demonstrate in this paper that high-value chemicals can be obtained from aromatic compounds by shape-selective catalytic conversion over certain zeolite catalysts. They are studying shape-selective alkylation of naphthalene, shape-selective isopropylation of biphenyl, ring-shift isomerization of phenanthrene derivatives into anthracene derivatives, shape-selective hydrogenation of naphthalene, and conformational isomerization of decahydronaphthalene. The products of such selective reactions are intermediates for making value-added chemicals, monomers of advanced polymer materials, or components of advanced jet fuels. Furthermore, catalytic graphitization of anthracites has also been studied. The results demonstrates that using some metal compounds promote the graphitization, but the nature ofmore » the metal is less important.« less