Low temperature pyrolysis properties and kinetics of non-coking coal in Chinese western coals

Abstract Chinese western low-rank coals known as for its favorable characteristics play a key role in the production of coal oil. In this work, based on the changes in element occurrence during low-temperature pyrolysis of coal, the kinetic and thermodynamic characteristics of coal at 400–500 °C temperatures with 10 °C/min heat rate were studied, which resulted in the drastically cracking of aliphatic groups. However, a significant amount of oxygen-containing functional groups were also found during coal pyrolysis at low temperature followed pseudo-first-order kinetics. According to the low-temperature thermal kinetics analysis of different coals, the activation energy of coking coal is higher than that of non-coking coals, and the activation of non-coking coals is relatively low under the same pyrolysis conditions. The objective of this work is to provide theoretical data about the pyrolysis characteristics of non-coking coal at low temperature and increase the non-coking coal proportion in coking proceeding.