TITLE: Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center Quarterly Technical Progress

      Report for the Period Ending September 30, 1985.

INST.  AUTHOR: Department of Energy, Pittsburgh, PA. Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center.

SPONSOR: Department of Energy, Washington, DC.

LANGUAGE: English

PUB.  TYPE: Technical Report

PUB.  COUNTRY: United States

SOURCE: Department of Energy [DE],  Jun 86,  165p.

NTIS ORDER NO.: DE86010843/INW

ABSTRACT:

Encouraging progress was made toward the development of acid rain control technology. PETC competitively selected and awarded contracts totaling over $8 million over the next three years to firms proposing new concepts for reducing the costs of cleaning the flue gas emissions of older, coal-burning power plants. PETC and ANL have undertaken a joint venture in dry flue-gas scrubbing that will ultimately lead to testing of a sorbent for combined SO/sub x/ and NO/sub x/ removal in Argonne's 20-megawatt spray dryer. The overall objective of a high-sulfur coal research program is to conduct a broad spectrum of coal-related research in order to increase and expand the use of coal in an environmentally acceptable manner. In the liquefaction program area, operations with Wyodak subbituminous coal are proceeding smoothly (Run 249) at the Wilsonville Process Development Unit. Understanding the processes involved in catalyst deactivation is important to the development of longer lived catalysts. In the area of process analysis, PETC has acquired a new version of ASPEN (Advanced System for Process Engineeering) software. The new version was recently installed on PETC's VAX/VMS operating system and is the most up-to-date version currently available. Work at PETC has resulted in the development and testing of a highly automated capillary tube viscometer for use with heavy coal-derived liquids. Results of PETC research in Fischer-Tropsch product characterization were also shared with the technical community. A particularly difficult analytical problem in the characterization of Fischer-Tropsch products is quantitative determination of carbon number distributions by compound class. PETC scientists developed a method that uses capillary gas chromatographic techniques to make these determinations. A paper describing the method was the lead article in the July 1985 issue of the Journal of Chromatographic Science and was featured on the cover. (ERA citation 11:033493)

REPORT  NUMBER: DOE/PETC/QTR-85/4