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Experimental Study on Coal Tar Pyrolysis in Thermal Plasma

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Abstract

This work applied coal tar as a potential kind of feedstock in thermal plasma pyrolysis process, by which effective transforming from coal tar to acetylene could be realized in milliseconds. A kilowatt level lab-scale plasma pyrolysis device for coal tar pyrolysis was established. Experiments with three typical coal tars were carried out to investigate the influences of operating parameters on the feedstock conversion and the yields of total light gas and acetylene. The results show that low-temperature coal tar has the best pyrolysis performance, with the highest light gas yield exceeding 70 % and acetylene yield of 45 % when using Ar plasma. Considering both conversion and energy efficiency, 6.0 × 104 kJ/kg is regarded as the most appropriate specific energy input for coal tar in Ar/H2 plasma, which promises a conversion of 65 %. Further discussion was made that coal tar has better pyrolysis properties than coals.

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Acknowledgments

Financial supports from the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program No. 2012CB720301), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant No. 20976091, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant No. 2014M550072, the National Institute of Clean-and-low-carbon Energy (NICE) and Xinjiang Tianye (Group) Co. Ltd. are acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Beijing Key Laboratory of Green Chemical Reaction Engineering and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, People’s Republic of China

    Yan Cheng, Binhang Yan, Tianyang Li & Yi Cheng

  2. National Institute of Clean-and-Low-Carbon Energy, P. O. Box 001, Shenhua NICE, Future Science and Technology City, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 102209, People’s Republic of China

    Xuan Li & Cliff Yi Guo

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  1. Yan Cheng
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  2. Binhang Yan
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  3. Tianyang Li
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  4. Yi Cheng
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  5. Xuan Li
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  6. Cliff Yi Guo
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Correspondence to Yi Cheng.

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Cheng, Y., Yan, B., Li, T. et al. Experimental Study on Coal Tar Pyrolysis in Thermal Plasma. Plasma Chem Plasma Process 35, 401–413 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11090-014-9608-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11090-014-9608-3

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