The impetus for this book is twofold. First, in response to the well documented oil shocks of the 1970s there arose a resurgence of research activity in the synthetic fuels area. This book attempts to capture some of the leading edge advances which have been made over the past decade in the area of the chemistry of coal conversion. The second driving force behind this book is to jog people's memories about the fundamental truths of the energy industry, i. e. , there IS a finite amount of liquid hydrocarbons on and under the earth's surface, most of the easy to find, produce, and use liquid hydrocarbons have been exploited, and the real need continues to be for liquid hydrocarbons for use as trans portation fuels. The uncertainty is not if synthetic liquids will be needed, but rat her when they will be needed. The inability to answer that question accurately caused many of the financial and research disruptions following the double shocks of the 1970s. Since future projections can only be based upon the historical record, they cannot anticipate major disruptions such as, e. g. , discovery of huge easily producible oils fields, or, on the other side, global or regional economic disruptions such as warfare. With this level of uncertainty, then, the second impetus is to point out how much research remains to be done at a time when fiscal support for fossil fuels research in the Uni ted States is rapidly spiraling downward.

Coal is more abundant than petroleum and natural gas. Further, coal is not localized but can be used by many more countries than petroleum. Therefore, if we can establish coal utilization technology, coal will bring about a great contribution to human life and society. On the other hand, shortage of petroleum and natural gas are anticipated in the second half of the 21st century. To compensate, the use of coal is expected to gradually increase during the 21st century. In the future, the development of the coal utilization technology will become more and more important to insure the supply of liquid fuels for transportation and carbon sources for the manufacture of chemicals and plastic materials.In order to develop such technologies, the elucidation of the structure of coal is a fundamental area of study. Further, more efficient coal utilization technology must be established to meet environmental legislation. One of the key technologies for this purpose is catalysis. This volume provides detail of the basic and practical aspects of the science and technology of coal utilization with and without catalysts. The actual structure of coal, the chemistry included in the reactivity of coal, the methods to elucidate the structure of coal and re-action mechanisms of coal conversion, the most important catalyst for converting coal to liquid and gas, the role of the catalysts in coal conversion, the problems in the process engineering, and how to meet environmental regulations are discussed in detail. The recent progress in studies on the structure and reactivity of coal made over the last century is summarized and reviewed with emphasis on both fundamental and applied aspects of the science and technology for coal processing in the presence and absence of catalysts. * This book highlights the issues faced in trying to discover more efficient coal utilization technology.* Provides detailed discussion on how to meet environmental regulations and legislation. * Fills the gap between both the scientific and practical sides of coal utilization with and without catalysts.

In this historical review the NBS work on hydrocarbons is discussed in terms of the three major classes of natural hydrocarbonaceous fuels: natural gas, petroleum, and coal. The work done on the measurement of properties of the pure components has included measurement of the values of the properties themselves and development of practical and accurate measurement procedures and instruments. In addition, combustion energies, densities, viscosities, vapor pressures, refractive indices, elemental compositions and other parameters have been determined for complex fuel mixtures and correlated to find methods of estimating properties. Extensive standard reference data tables have been compiled and a number of standard reference materials have been developed.

Written by an author with over 38 years of experience in the chemical and petrochemical process industry, this handbook will present an analysis of the process steps used to produce industrial hydrocarbons from various raw materials. It is the first book to offer a thorough analysis of external factors effecting production such as: cost, availability and environmental legislation. An A-Z list of raw materials and their properties are presented along with a commentary regarding their cost and availability. Specific processing operations described in the book include: distillation, thermal cracking and coking, catalytic methods, hydroprocesses, thermal and catalytic reforming, isomerization, alkylation processes, polymerization processes, solvent processes, water removal, fractionation and acid gas removal. - Flow diagrams and descriptions of more than 250 leading-edge process technologies - An analysis of chemical reactions and process steps that are required to produce chemicals from various raw materials - Properties, availability and environmental impact of various raw materials used in hydrocarbon processing