Issue 21/2018 - Significant progress has been made in the research of indirect coal liquefaction technology

 
The Beijing Institute of Low Carbon and Clean Energy, in collaboration with researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology and other institutions in the Netherlands, has developed a new catalyst that can significantly reduce the cost of indirect coal liquefaction, opening a new door for capturing and utilizing carbon dioxide produced during coal liquefaction, according to a recent publication in
the journal Science Progress.

Traditional iron-based catalysts convert about 30% of carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide during Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, which is not only difficult to capture and utilize, but also consumes a lot of energy
.
The purity of the active material of this new iron-based catalyst is 100%, and it can be stably catalyzed for more than 400 hours under industrial synthesis conditions, so that coal liquefaction produces almost no carbon dioxide during the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis process; All carbon dioxide is produced in the water gas conversion reaction, which is convenient for one-time centralized capture and utilization, and greatly reduces greenhouse gas emissions
.

Wang Peng, a senior engineer at the Beijing Low Carbon and Clean Energy Research Institute, pointed out that using this new iron-based catalyst, a coal liquefaction plant with an annual output of 4 million tons of oil can save about 800 million yuan per year in terms of compressed heating energy consumption and carbon dioxide separation
.