Title: Thermal degradation and kinetic studies of ionic liquid and mixed solvent pre-treated Indian coals

Authors: Sanjukta Bhoi; Kaustubha Mohanty; Tamal Banerjee

Addresses: Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati – 781039, India ' Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati – 781039, India ' Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati – 781039, India

Abstract: This work focuses on the interaction of coal with three different ionic liquids (ILs) and mixed solvent for analysing the oxidising effect on Indian coal. The ILs; 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium methyl carbonate [BMPYR][CH₃CO₃], 1 butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate [BMIM][PF₆], and 1-butyl-4-methylpyridinium tetrafluoroborate [BMPY][BF₄] were subsequently used for dissolution studies. The thermogravimetric analysis result shows that the mass loss was less for [BMPYR] [CH₃CO₃] and mixed solvent ([BMPYR][CH₃CO₃] + pyridine) pre-treated coal as compared to other. Hence the IL has the largest ability to fractionate the more active oxygen containing functional groups present in the coal. The thermal degradation study shows that the thermal stability of mixed solvent and IL-pre-treated coal provides a temperature of above ~630°C, which is a quite high as compared to raw coal. The IL-pre-treated coal also requires lesser energy (low activation energy) during gasification processes which will be beneficial from an economic point of view. [Received: October 19, 2017; Accepted: March 11, 2018]

Keywords: activation energy; coal; combustion; devolatilisation; dissolution; fragmentation; ionic liquids; pyrolysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOGCT.2020.105457

International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, 2020 Vol.23 No.2, pp.218 - 239

Received: 19 Oct 2017
Accepted: 11 Mar 2018
Published online: 02 Mar 2020 *

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