Reactions of coal with nitrogen/ hydrogen mixtures in a discharge

In-discharge reaction of coal with nitrogen/hydrogen mixtures rather than nitrogen alone raises rates of hydrogen cyanide generation by a factor of 10–50, and makes hydrogen cyanide account for ≈70–90% of the total product-gas volume. From these results and parallel tests with a pure carbon, it is concluded that enhanced formation of hydrogen cyanide is controlled by transient hydrogenation of aromatic carbon and consequent creation of additional (non-aromatic) reaction centres which can be abstracted by N^*.