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Module 2: Solid Fossil Fuel (Coal)

Lecture 12: Combustion of coal and coke making

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Keywords: Coal tar, distillation, caustic washing, deoiling 

2.4 Combustion of coal and coke making

2.4.3 Coal tar distillation

Coal tar is obtained as a by-product while processing coking coal to form metallurgical coke in a

recovery-type coke oven plant. Coal tar accounts for around 3.5-4% of coke produced. Coal tar

pitch is a complex chemical mixture of phenols, cresols and xylenols (which together termed as

tar acids), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), and heterocyclic compounds, which can be

recovered by distillation to give a variety of valuable chemical products. The residue of

distillation is coal tar pitch, which is further processed into coal tar pitch of desired chemical and

physical properties.

The primary objective of coal tar distillation process is to produce a number of tar acid products

from the crude tar. Tar distillation plant (TDP) consists of the following sections,

i) Tar distillation section

ii) Caustic washing section

iii) De-oiling section

iv) Springing section

v) Recasting section

The block diagram of TDP is shown in Figure 1.

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Tar distillation section

The purpose of tar distillation is to 1) dehydrate the tar in the dehydration column, 2) remove the

pitch from dehydrated tar in pitch column and 3) separate tar oils in fractionating column.

Fig 1. Block flow diagram of Tar Distillation Plant

The crude tar stored at elevated temperature in the storage tank is drawn through crude tar filter

and mixed with caustic soda pumped from caustic tank by dosing pump. The mixture is pumped

through tar vapour exchanger and steam-heated preheater to the bottom of the dehydration

column. In the column the crude tar is contacted with a relatively large stream of hot dehydrated

tar. The azeotropic water and oil mixture is vaporized and goes up to the top of the column and

condensed in a light oil condenser. A portion of the azeotropic light oil is sent back to the

column as reflux and the remaining portion is sent to an azeotropic distillation column. The

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bottom fraction of the dehydrator column is pumped at a high rate through pipe-still economizer

and heated. This bottom fraction is dehydrated tar, some part of which is sent back to the lower

part of the column.

In pitch column the dehydrated tar is mixed with a relatively large stream of hot circulating

pitch. The more volatile oils in the tar are vaporized and rose up through the column. Stripping

stream is injected in the column to run the operation. Crude pitch is drawn from the bottom of

the column by pitch circulating pump and heated by a pipe-still heater. Some part of this pitch is

put into the top of the column for contacting with the dehydrated tar.

Volatile portion along with the stripping steam are recovered from the pitch column and

separated into the light oil and water fraction, a middle oil fraction and a heavy oil fraction. The

light oil and water fraction combines with the same stream from the overhead of dehydration

column and are sent to light oil condenser and then to a decanter. Middle oil flows by gravity

through middle oil cooler either to middle oil buffer tank or directly to the mixing vessel in the

caustic washing section. Middle oil can be transferred from buffer tank to the caustic section as

per requirement.

Caustic washing section

Middle oil from the tar distillation section is counter currently contacted with a flow of 10%

caustic soda solution. The system consists of three mixing vessels and three separators, situated

alternatively. Middle oil, stripped of its tar acids, flows by gravity from top of the separators to

the middle tank. The caustic solution, which is sodium phenolate solution mainly after contacting

with oil, flows by gravity from the bottom of the separator to phenolate tank.

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De-oiling section

The sodium phenolate solution contains small amount of middle oil, which must be removed to

get good quality of tar acids. Sodium phenolate solution in buffer tank is pumped via overhead

exchanger into the top of the sodium phenolate stripping column. Stripping steam is introduced

at the bottom of the column which strips out the middle oil from the sodium phenolate solution.

The overhead vapour heats the incoming sodium phenolate solution and cools down. Clean

sodium phenolate solution is recovered from the bottom of the stripping column and sent to the

springing section via cooler.

Springing section

The objective of this section is to recover tar acids from sodium phenolate solution by springing

with a carbon dioxide rich gas in a series of two packed column in counter flow. Gas is passed in

upward motion through the descending sodium phenolate solution in the first column, where

sodium carbonate is formed. The bottom of the first column is introduced at the top of the second

column where the stream is again contacted with carbon dioxide counter currently. The sodium

carbonate solution is sent to a separator from the bottom of the column. Crude tar acid collected

and stored in the tar acid buffer tank. Carbon dioxide rich gas is continuously bubbled through

the crude tar acid buffer tank to reduce the alkali and water content of tar acids.

Recasting section

In this section, the sodium carbonate solution from the springing section is concentrated with

hard burnt lime to produce caustic soda.

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Recovery of tar acids

Crude wet tar acids recovered from springing plant contains little amount of water and pitch. It is

pumped to the top of the dehydration column which operates under vacuum, maintained by

ejector system. Azeotropic mixture of water and phenol is stripped out from tar acids and

removed as an overhead vapour. The dry tar acids obtained as bottom product is sent to a

depitching still which is nothing but a kettle reboiler operates under high vacuum. Crude tar

acids are vaporized and condensed in a condenser. The tar acids are flown to a buffer tank which

is fitted with a steam coil to prevent the solidification of tar acids. The phenolic pitch is collected

at the bottom of the kettle, mixed with the heavy oil and sent to a storage tank, jacketed with

steam to maintain the pitch in a free flowing state. The crude tar acids from the tank are pumped

to the primary distillation unit operated under high vacuum. During distillation, the crude tar

acids are separated into three fractions: crude phenol as overhead product, crude cresol as side

stream and crude xylenols/High boiling tar acids (HBTA) as the bottom product.

The crude phenol collected in a tank from this column is pumped to a vacuum column after

heating in a kettle. Pure phenol is collected at the top condenser. A portion of it is sent to the

column as reflux. The other portion is pumped to a storage tank. The residue of this column is

mixed with the crude cresol in the storage.

Crude cresol from the storage tank is pumped from the storage tank into a kettle to preheat and

then vacuum distilled in a column. The top product from this column is phenol, which is sent to

the crude phenol storage tank. The first side fraction is o-cresol, next one is a mixture of m- and

p-cresol and the bottom product is crude xylenol/HBTA mixture which is sent to xylenol/HBTA

storage tank.

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Another vacuum batch distillation is carried out to recover xylenol product and HBTA. Crude

xylenols is pumped from the storage tank to a preheater kettle and sent to high vacuum

distillation columns. Four cuts are distilled which require three different column arrangements.

The first cut is a mixture of m- and p-cresol; second cut is of mixed xylenols. Next cut is a

mixture of xylenols and HBTA mixture and the last fraction or residue is HBTA.

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Reference

1. CFRI report, http://www.cfriindia.nic.in/bro‐all.pdf 

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