Suppressing secondary reactions of coal pyrolysis by reducing pressure and mounting internals in fixed-bed reactor

Pyrolysis of Shenmu coal was performed in fixed-bed reactors indirectly heated by reducing operating pressure and mounting internals in the reactor to explore their synergetic effects on coal pyrolysis. Mounting internals particularly designed greatly improved the heat transfer inside coal bed and raised the yield of tar production.Reducing pressure further facilitated the production of tar through its suppression of secondary reactions occurring in the reactor. The absolute increase in tar yield reached 3.33 wt% in comparison with the pyrolysis in the reactor without internals under atmospheric pressure. The obtained tar yield in the reactor with internals under reduced pressure was even higher than the yield of Gray–King assay. Through experiments in a laboratory fixed bed reactor, it was also clarified that the effect of reducing pressure is related to volatile release rate in pyrolysis. It did not obviously vary tar yield at pyrolysis temperatures below 600 °C, while the effect was evident at 650 and 700 °C but became limited again above 800 °C. Under reduced pressure the produced tar contained more aliphatics and phenols but less aromatics.

Characteristics of oil shale pyrolysis in a two-stage fluidized bed

Rapid pyrolysis of oil shale coupled with in-situ upgrading of pyrolysis volatiles over oil shale char was studied in a laboratory two-stage fluidized bed(TSFB) to clarify the shale oil yield and quality and their variations with operating conditions. Rapid pyrolysis of oil shale in fluidized bed(FB) obtained shale oil yield higher than the Fischer Assay oil yield at temperatures of 500-600 ℃. The highest yield was 12.7 wt% at 500 ℃ and was about1.3 times of the Fischer Assay oil yield. The heavy fraction(boiling point > 350 ℃) in shale oil at all temperatures from rapid pyrolysis was above 50%. Adding an upper FB of secondary cracking over oil shale char caused the loss of shale oil but improved its quality. Heavy fraction yield decreased significantly and almost disappeared at temperatures above 550 ℃, while the corresponding light fraction(boiling point < 350 ℃) yield dramatically increased. In terms of achieving high light fraction yield, the optimal pyrolysis and also secondary cracking temperatures in TSFB were 600 ℃, at which the shale oil yield decreased by 17.74% but its light fraction yield of 7.07 wt% increased by 86.11% in comparison with FB pyrolysis. The light fraction yield was higher than that of Fischer Assay at all cases in TSFB. Thus, a rapid pyrolysis of oil shale combined with volatile upgrading was important for producing high-quality shale oil with high yield as well.

Pyrolysis characteristics of waste tire particles in fixed-bed reactor with internals

This study investigated the characteristics of pyrolysis for waste tire particles in the newly developed fixed-bed reactor with internals that are a central gas collection channel mounted inside reactor.And a few metallic plates vertically welded on the internal wall of the reactors and extending to the region closing their central gas collection pipe walls.Experiments were conducted in two laboratory fixed bed reactors with or without the internals.The results shown that employing internals produced more light oil at externally heating temperatures above 700℃due to the inhibited secondary reactions in the reactor.The oil from the reactor with internals contained more aliphatic hydrocarbons and fewer aromatic hydrocarbons,leading to its higher H/C atomic ratios as for crude petroleum oil.The char yield was relatively stable for two beds and showed the higher heating values(HHVs)of about 23 MJ/kg.The gaseous product of pyrolysis mainly consisted of H2 and CH4,but the use of internals led to less pyrolysis gas through its promotion of oil production.