Abstract
It has become apparent that synthetic coal made from Kuwait and Agha Jari vacuum residual oils with gas flow has better coking properties and gives even stronger metallurgical cokes than will the natural U. S. coking coals of medium and low volatile matter. This is because the flowing gas will tend to reduce the partial pressures of the gaseous compounds produced by coking of the feed oil. It is assumed that a combination, which is not found in any natural coking coal, of a fairly high crucible swelling number, a reasonable ratio of C/H, an extremely high fluidity and a moderately high content of volatile matter of the synthetic coal gives good coking properties. The synthetic coal can probably be commercially produced with greater ease than by vacuum coking described in our previous paper, because coking with gas flow can be carried out at atmospheric pressure.
It has also been found that properties of the distillates obtained by coking with gas flow are the same as those of the distillates obtained by coking under reduced pressures, and the distillates seem to be good feedstocks for indirect hydrodesulfurization because they contain neither metals nor asphaltene.
