Studies on Curie-Point Pyrolysis of Coal Model Compounds

Curie-point pyrolysis/GC and /GC/MS analyses were carried out for 14 coal model aromatic compounds with longer alkyl side chains or polymethylene bridges. It was found that (i) pyrolytic products reflected quantitatively constituents of original model compounds (though thermal decomposition in these systems is complicated with several secondary reactions), (ii) a series of 1-alkenes was obtained as major aliphatic products from the pyrolysis of the model compounds having longer alkyl side chain, while Curie-point pyrolysis of some coals or their extracts afforded a series of n-alkanes as major products along with minor amounts of 1-alkenes, and (iii) model compounds such as more condensed aromatic compounds or the aromatic compounds having oxygen functional groups afforded n-alkanes preferentially along with 1-alkenes. On the basis of the results obtained in this paper, we tried to correlate Curie-point pyrolytic products of extracts from Illinois No. 6 coal with its supposed organic chemical structure.