Keynote: Cleaner Conversion of Coal and Other Hydrocarbons to Chemicals in Thermal Plasma Reactors

Chemical conversion processes are most often operated at the temperatures below 1000°C. However, challenges have been encountered when the feedstock can be hardly converted using conventional means. This presentation will overview our recent efforts to convert coal and other hydrocarbons to valuable chemicals at ultra-high temperatures in thermal plasmas. The interest in the potential applications of thermal plasma techniques comes from their unique thermodynamic and transport properties, for example, rapid heating of the feed to the temperature of the order of >10³ K; high rate of chemical reactions, leading to high-productivity reactors; and so on. To understand the thermal chemical processes with coal, coal tar, asphaltene or other gas/liquid hydrocarbons as the feed, experimental and theoretical researches have been carried out to disclose the means how to manipulate the cleaner conversion of feedstock as well as the composition of gases products. Perspectives on these unique chemical processes will be discussed.