K2CO3-catalysed steam gasification of supercritical extracted chars

The K₂C0₃-catalysed steam gasification of coal chars, obtained by the Supercritical Gas Extraction (SGE) process, is studied. Kinetics experiments used a gravimetric technique at atmospheric pressure and at temperatures ranging from 700 to 800 °C. It was found that K₂C0₃ is an effective catalyst for steam gasification of solvent extracted residue. The catalytic effect was similar to that observed for gasification of the unextracted parent coal. The gasification-time curves exhibited a sigmoid shape, which reduced to a single master curve for the various reaction temperatures studied and fitted well the predictions of the random capillary model. Activation energies, calculated using this model, varied from 155 to 173 kJ mol^?1 for the various chars studied.