Structures of Aromatic Clusters of Different Coals Based on Benzene Carboxylic Acids from Coal via Oxidation

Abstract

Benzene carboxylic acids (BCAs) are considered to be an important group of chemicals and widely used in the chemical industry. The generation of BCAs from coal via oxidation is widely studied, indicating that the distributions of BCAs are various with different coals and the yields of BCAs with lower numbers of carboxyl groups increase in the process of coalification. However, the relationship between distributions of BCAs and the aromatic clusters of coal is unclear. In this work, combined with the results of distributions of BCAs and 13C NMR, the most probable aromatic clusters in different coals were proposed. The result indicates that, in the process of coalification (from lignite to anthracite), the aromatic cluster size and the degree of condensed aromatic rings both increase with an increase in carbon content or coal rank, but the substituted degree of aromatic rings decreases. When the carbon content of coal is lower than 87%, the aromatic rings in coal are arranged in a linear catenation manner. ...