A Preliminary Study on Pyrolysis and Gasification of Asphaltenes and Coal-Asphaltenes Slurry in Entrained Flow Reactor

The aim of this work is to study pyrolysis of coal-asphaltenes slurry in an atmospheric entrained flow reactor. Athabasca asphaltenes and Genesee coal, both from Alberta in Canada, were selected as the feedstock. Char characteristics and the structure of asphaltenes and slurry chars including morphology, particle size distribution and surface area were determined. Besides, the reactivity of chars obtained from the fast pyrolysis was measured and the effect of temperature, heating rate and residence time on the produced char reactivity was investigated. Furthermore, the gasification kinetics of the asphaltenes and slurry chars with O2 were studied and a reaction kinetic was proposed based on the TGA results. The results revealed that in the slurry char, asphaltenes part and coal part involve in the reaction with oxygen separately. It is also concluded that the reactivity of the chars obtained from the slurry of coal-asphaltenes was lower than the asphaltenes chars.