Indirect coal to liquid technologies

• The latest progress of indirect coal liquefaction catalysts was summarized.
• Syngas to methanol, dimethyl ether, olefins and ethyl glycol was summarized.
• Novel catalysts and mechanisms of Fischer–Tropsch were summarized.
• Future prospects of indirect coal liquefaction technologies were discussed.

Indirect coal liquefaction has enormous potential applications. Increasingly, new synthetic technologies have been concentrating in this area, and a number of new large-scale indirect coal liquefaction plants have been set up during very recent years. Further, a large volume of papers on indirect coal liquefaction have been published over the last two decades, including those on Fischer–Tropsch synthesis, syngas to ethylene glycol, syngas to methanol, dimethyl ether as well as methanol to olefins. In this review, the recent literature of indirect liquefaction, including Fischer–Tropsch and syngas to chemicals, are summarized, with an emphasis on the reaction mechanisms, conditions and novel catalysts.

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