Relationship Between Coal Characteristics and Its Reactivity on Hydroliquefaction

It has recently been acknowledged that in future coal will play a more important role as an energy source for petroleum. Especially in Japan, whose energy sources depend largely on imported petroleum, the development of coal technology must be accelerated to prepare against a future energy crisis. Coal liquefaction, one of the processes that promises to solve this crisis, is now in the development stage. As with petroleum, Japan depends on imported foreign coal, because of its own peculiar coal mining conditions. But in Japan, a wide variety of coal species will be used for liquefaction. Therefore, the effect of characteristics of coal on reactivity during liquefaction is an important research subject for selecting the coal species. Location, Geology and General Characteristics of Japanese Coals The geographical distribution of Japan's main coal fields and coal mines is shown in Fig.1. Though Japan is composed of four main islands, i.e., Hokkaido,