Vapor pressures and heats of vaporization of primary coal tars. Quarterly technical progress report, October 1, 1995--December 31, 1995

Abstract

As the world continues to deplete its petroleum reserves, lower quality fossil fuels will play an increasingly important role in energy production. Heavy crude oil, coal liquids, and other heavy fossil fuels may be required to meet world energy needs. Heavy fossil fuels are generally higher in molecular weight, more aromatic, and contain more heteroatoms than higher quality petroleum. There will be an increasing need to deal with such low quality feedstocks, and therefore, an incentive to learn more about their properties. There is also significant current interest in the general area of coal pyrolysis, particularly with respect to comprehensive models of this complicated phenomenon. This interest derives from the central role of pyrolysis in all thermally driven coal conversion processes - gasification, combustion, liquefaction, mild gasification, or thermal beneficiation. There remain several key data needs in these application areas. Among them is a need for more reliable correlations for predicting vapor pressures of heavy, primary coal tars. Such information is important in design of all coal conversion processes, in which the volatility of tarry products is of major concern. This work presents results on vapor pressures and vaporization heat of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and mixtures found in coal tar.