Organosulphur compounds in coals as determined by reaction with Raney nickel and microscale pyrolysis techniques. Fifth quarterly report, October 1, 1995--December 31, 1995

This project is designed to study the nature of sulphur-containing organic compounds and their respective linkages in coals and related materials using a variety of microscale pyrolysis techniques combined with gas chromatography--mass spectrometry. The majority of the work will be undertaken using a PYRAN pyrolysis system purchased with funds from the DOE University Instrumentation Program. Since the last report, we have reached the point in the project that we are satisfied with the nickel boride chemical degradation method, and are now working our way through the large amounts of data collected by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis. While we have tentatively identified a variety of compounds produced by the chemical degradation method with spectra from the literature, we have yet to confirm many of these identifications with pure standards or specialized oil samples. As a result we will present in this report chromatograms of one of the coals (Illinois No. 6) and compare the free aliphatic hydrocarbons with those compounds cleaved from the polar extract, asphaltenes and pre-extracted coal matrix