Victorian brown coal in Australia is an important resource because of its huge reserve and low mining cost. However, it is still used only for power generation near its mine although many advanced technologies such as gasification and pyrolysis have been developed to convert it into more valuable products. After oil crisis in 1970s, the BCL (Brown Coal Liquefaction) process has developed to liquefy it into transportation fuel, but it is also not commercialized because the coal-derived fuel is not competitive economically with petroleum. The coal-liquefied products contain poly-aromatics, heterocyclic compounds and pitch, which have potential to be used as feedstocks for chemicals, coke-binder and carbon-materials in chemical and tar industries. When the products are used as feedstocks, their value increases compared to fuel use; the plant capacity and liquefaction conditions become small and mild. To use as feedstocks, these product distribution between distillate and pitch should be changed by controlling the liquefaction conditions according to the specialties of the feedstocks. This means that the configuration of the BCL process is modified to change the product distribution and to decrease the production cost. As a result, the modified BCL process is able to become an efficient and noble utilization technology of the brown coal.

In recent years, co-firing and co-gasification using sludge and coal has been carried out for utilizing sewage sludge as new energy. In co-pyrolysis process on co-gasification and co-carbonization, clarifying the characteristics of char produced from sludge and coal is important. Because it is assumed that the reaction between char and pyrolysis gas will be occurred by blending both raw materials. So, we conducted co-pyrolysis experiments changed temperature, sample ratio and coal kind, and investigated the influence of co-pyrolysis conditions on char yield and surface area of co-char produced from sludge and coal by comparing with the characteristics of single char produced from a raw material. As a result, yield of co-char increased more than that of value added single chars, and pore surface area of co-char decreased more than that of value added single chars. In the case of using another kind coal in co-pyrolysis experiment, char yield, carbon ratio and heating value of co-char increased more than values added single chars. However, there is no difference of raman spectrum between co-char’s and single char’s. So, we revealed that char yield, pore surface area and element ratio of co-char produced from sludge and coal were not expressed by adding single char characteristics produced from a raw material. And mixing both materials during pyrolysis affected the characteristics of char.