The significant breakthrough has been made recently in preparation of clean fuel oil by catalytic hydrogenation of coal tar developed by Institute of Coal Chemistry, CAS, and smooth running for the pilot scale experiments of the whole process has been completed successfully. The results indicated that the performance of the prepared catalysts is stable and the obtained products are gasoline and diesel oil blending component with high quality whose performances accord with the national related standards of fuel oil.

The fast-growing coal-tar resource has not been used effectively for a long time in our country. Most of it is used only as poor-quality fuel oil and inferior products, which leads to not only waster of a great deal of coal-tar resource but also serious pollution of environment.

Institute of Coal Chemistry, CAS has done series of researching and developing work on preparation of clean fuel oil by catalytic hydrogenation of coal tar for the past few years. The project has been strongly supported by National Key Technology Research and Development Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, Bureau of Academy-Locality Cooperation CAS, the Shanxi Science and Technology Department and several large enterprises. After large number of experiments of laboratory and pilot plant, the institute produced stable and highly active proprietary catalysts for preparation of clean fuel oil by catalytic hydrogenation of coal tar, solved series of technical problems in the developing the catalytic hydrogenation of coal tar process, and developed the process design package for preparation of clean fuel oil by catalytic hydrogenation of 100,000 tons/year coal tar. Now the research center is cooperating with a relevant enterprise of Xinjiang to construct a demonstration project for the technology, and the plant is expected to begin production in August 2012.

The popularization and application of the technology will provide a feasible way for the utilization of much coal tar produced by the today’s booming coal chemical industry such as coal gasification, coal to semicoke or traditionary metallurgical coke, and the developing coal low-temperature distillation industry, etc. In addition, the wide application of the technology will bring not only good economic benefits, but also social and environmental beneficial results due to its increasing job opportunities and reducing environmental pollution.

(Haitao Cui, Zegang Qiu)