Anaerobic bioprocessing of Wyodak (USA) coal

✍ Scribed by Mahendra K. Jain; Deborah Burgdorf; Ramani Narayan

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 522 KB
• Volume: 70
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-2361
• DOI: 10.1016/0016-2361(91)90167-9

✦ Synopsis

Subbituminous and lignite coals contain high levels of oxygen. Extensive structure reactivity studies of Wyodak coal have revealed that carboxy groups and ether linkages are the predominant oxygen functionahties of this coal. Chemical decarboxylation to remove oxygen and upgrade the coal can be achieved at high temperatures and under such conditions the low rank coals undergo retrogressive reactions. An anaerobic microbial process to decarboxylate coal is being developed, which would operate at ambient conditions. The anaerobic microbial consortium developed has resulted in decarboxylation of coal and anaerobically bioprocessed coal has exhibited an increase in H/C ratio in comparison to unprocessed coal. In this paper, new results and their implications in microbial processing of coal in relation to the current _ _ bioprocessing schemes are presented.