Use of COALDATA to help retrieve and estimate the physical properties of coals, coal liquids and coal chemicals

Abstract

COALDATA, a factual databank of the properties of coal samples, coal liquids (distillation cuts from coal liquefaction products) and coal chemicals (pure chemical compounds con tained in the coal liquids) was developed. It contains data on: (i) physical properties of coals, such as calonfic values, ash content, ash properties, maceral analyses, ultimate analyses. (ii) thermophysical properties of coal liquids and coal chem icals, e.g. vapour pressures, vapour-liquid-equilibrium data, heat capacities, transport properties, surface ten sions, densities. The databank is managed by DECHEMA's Data Retrieval System DEDARS, which stores numerical data as well as non-numerical data, such as bibliographic information. Data and substances are labelled by "tags" which characterize the kind of stored data and substances. All the information is organized in the form of documents. Each document refers, for example, to a scientific paper or book and is composed of a bibliographic part, a list of descriptors, an abstract, a compo nent description, numerical values and their units. Besides literature data COALDATA contains recom mended property values. These are stored as regression coeffi cients and with the help of implemented correlation methods it is possible to calculate the properties.