Conversion of low rank coals (LRC) into value added chemicals continues to be one of the challenging chemical processes. Economically, due to its low heat value and high moisture and ash contents and environmentally, due to its high sulfur content. In this work, we studied the microwave-assisted conversion of Mississippi, a lignite LRC, in presence of methane under different experimental conditions such as the reaction temperature (from 400 to 1000 <sup>o</sup>C) , microwave power ( from 200 to 1700 W) and concentration of methane (from 0 to 90 Vol%). The correlation between these effects and products distributions will be discussed. The initial results suggested that the presence of methane helped in reducing and breaking down heavy tars into useful aromatic compounds such as benzene and toluene. The structure-reactivity of generated chars was also investigated using a variety of characterization tools such as XRD, BET, SEM, EDS, and FTIR. Finally, the char reactivity towards combustion will be discussed.

Microwave-assisted conversion of low rank coal under methane environment

255th National Meeting (2018)

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