Sustainable development of energy sources has been a global concern in the new century. Researchers from Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IPE) studied on upgrading coal tar to clean liquid fuels by two-stage catalytic hydroprocessing of middle-temperature. The research was published on the journal Fuel.

Coal tar is a complex mixture that can be used to produce conventional liquid fuels. Extensive researches have been focused on thermodynamics and kinetics of coal tar to understand the behavior of certain compounds under hydroprocessing conditions. IPE researchers provided an overall picture of coal tar hydrogenation.

Mo-Co and W-Ni catalysts were prepared by the procedure of pretreatment, impregnation and temperature-programming treatment. Clean liquid fuels were obtained from middle-temperature coal tar by hydrogenation in two-stage fixed beds filled with the catalysts. The product properties under varied reaction pressure and liquid hourly space velocity (LHSV) were investigated. Gasoline and diesel products were separated from the oil product and their components and functional groups were determined. The results showed that heteroatoms were greatly reduced in the two-stage reacting system and liquid fuels with high quality were obtained.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.21006113) and National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program No.2009CB219900).