Production and characterization of hybrid coal using sugar impurities extracted from pitch pine

The main concerns of coal power plants are related to high thermal efficiency and biomass utilization for the reduction of CO2 emissions. In this work, the fuel characteristics of a hybrid coal (HCK) impregnated by sugar impurities extracted from a lignocellulosic biomass were investigated. First, an optimized extraction condition for the sugar impurities was chosen among the various reaction temperatures and times using a hydrothermal pre-treatment (HTP) reactor. The extracted sugar impurities were consisted of 21.76 wt% glucan, 75.88 wt% XMG (xylan + mannan + galactan) and 2.36 wt% arabinan at the optimized reaction condition (190 °C and 30 min). 5 wt% sugar impurities based on the coal weight (dry basis) was used to prepare the HCK and the fuel characteristics were compared. According to the H/C and O/C ratios, raw coals were upgraded. In addition, the calorific value of the raw coals was enhanced by HCK production process. The HCKs had a low moisture re-adsorption rate in an excessive water immersion condition compared to the raw coals. To clarify the combustion behavior of the HCKs, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was carried out. The HCKs had a single-stage combustion pattern on the differential thermogravimetric (DTG) curve, even though they were composed of a coal and biomass resource. During the kinetic study of the raw coals and HCKs, a high reaction rate constant (k) and low activation energy (Ea) for the HCKs were identified compared to that of the raw coals.