Coal Chemical Engineering Facing the 21st Century

Coal is the main fossile resources and energy, but meanwhile it is also a main pollutionsource in China. From the viewpoints of environment protection, reasonable utilization of thelimited fossile resources as well as the existing condition of China, it is necessary to developnew technology greatly for high efficient coal cleaning under mild conditions,and thus to turnthe utilization processes of coal resources gradually from the utilization as energy only tothose as chemicals and materials. In recent years, we have been doing great deal of fundamental studies on coal extraction with various solvents, the mechanisms of the deashing anddesulfurization of coal, the reactions of coal-related model compounds, the separation and purification of polycyclic aromatics from coal tar, the syntheses of monomers for functionalpolymers, the preparation of effective asorbents for purifying CO, and so on. Combined withour recent work, this paper reviews the status in the research and development for coalchemical engineering, including various coal-cleaning processes, coal-derived chemicalsprocesses and the processes for coal-derived carbon materials. Basing on the limited resourcesof coal, the urgency to reduce environment pollution and the necessity of high value-addedutilization of coal, we emphasize that non-fuel utilization of coal should be an importantsubject.