Conceptual Design and Simulation of Solvent Refined Coal (SRC) Process

Abstract

Since 1970s, coal liquefaction technology has been developed mainly in the advanced countries including USA, Europe and Japan due to oil supply security and price concerns, which have led to a renewed interest in coal as an alternative feedstock for the crude oil. Coal-to-liquids (CTL) technology is classified into direct coal liquefaction (DCL) and indirect coal liquefaction (ICL). The primary purpose of this process is refining high-cleaned liquid oil such as diesel and naphtha. The residue as a by-product of the CTL process consists of three components which are ash, solvent refined coal (SRC) and insoluble organic matter. This paper is focused on SRC, which is a high-boiling solid product over 410℃ reformed by hydrogen. Hydrogenated coal is available to various fields such as a coke oven plant to upgrade caking property and chemical plants to use it as a recycle solvent. In this paper, the less efficient to produce SRC, but commercially proven, DCL process is the base of overall conceptual design of new SRC process. Finally, through the simulation of SRC process, a conceptual design with engineering data including process flow diagram, mass and energy balance, and energy optimization is established.