Experimental study on the pyrolysis of Shenhua coal to produce hydrogen

Based on thermogravimetric analysis, kinetic parameters of Shenhua coal, such as activation energy and frequency factor have been got from the TG / DTG results. It showed that activation energy is the smallest at the temperature from 850℃ to 930℃ with heating rate of 15℃·min-1 . Pyrolysis was further carried out on a fixed-bed reactor with different heating rate. The production of hydrogen has been studied in particular. It gave the highest hydrogen production at the heating rate of 15℃·min-1 . And it also found the increase of hydrogen production with the raise of temperature. Furthermore, catalytic pyrolysis of coal was done at adding 2% of transition-metal oxides to discover the impact of catalysts upon coal pyrolysis at heating rate of 15℃·min-1 . It indicated that both N-type and P-type oxide enhanced hydrogen production in coal pyrolysis. However, it showed that N-type oxide increased hydrogen production at medium temperatures, and P-type oxides improved hydrogen production at higher temperatures.