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FUEL CONTAMINANTS: VOLUME 3. CONTROL OF COAL-RELATED POLLUTANTS
Citation:
Mezey, E., S. Min, B. Allen, W. Baytos, AND S. Singh. FUEL CONTAMINANTS: VOLUME 3. CONTROL OF COAL-RELATED POLLUTANTS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/7-79/025A.
Description:
The report gives results of a study to identify strategies for removing pollutants from coal and coal-derived liquids. Of the approaches considered, five were selected for preliminary assessment by experimentation (a sixth, improvements in pyrite liberation from coal, was not studied because of significant advances by others). Study findings include: (1) biological action on coal-derived liquids--prospects of using nonmutated bacteria for sulfur and/or nitrogen removal from coal liquids appear small; (2) enhancement of pyrite removal during immiscible fluid agglomeration--removal equivalent to that obtained for float-sink analysis was obtained by pretreatment and oil agglomeration, the same technique found to be effective for recovering greater than 90% of coal from coal cleaning plant fines; (3) extraction of clean fuels from coal liquids--light hydrocarbons can be used to extract 83% of coal liquid at supercritical conditions to yield a low sulfur and nitrogen fuel; (4) concentration of organic sulfur and nitrogen and ash from coal liquids--up to 76% of the sulfur and about 10% of the nitrogen can be removed by passing coal liquids over various special porous media; and (5) conversion of coal liquefaction residues to environmentally acceptable fuels--treatment of coal liquefaction residue with H2/CO mixtures reduces nitrogen content by as much as 14%.