1991 Volume 70 Issue 8 Pages 811-819
Nowadays coals are believed to be complex macromolecular networks containing many covalent and noncovalent cross-links based on accumulated works utiliz-ing the solvent swelling technique. In this paper the importance of the noncovalent bondings in the coal structure was clarified by referring to the literature. Then a new and simple method which estimates the number of noncovalent bondings was introduced. This method utilizes the phenomena of the solvent-induced and the thermally induced swelling of coal, and analyzes the DSC profile measured while the solvent desorbs from the solvent swollen coal. Some noncovalent bondings were found to be broken thermally at 100 to 200°C. By uti-lizing this phenomenon flash pyrolysis of the coal preheated at 100 to 200°C was found to be effective to increase the coal conversion and the yield of liquid products.
