Coal Tar Market Research in the CIS

Coal tar is a product of the destructive distillation of bituminous coal. Coal tar can be distilled into many fractions to yield a number of useful organic products, including benzene, toluene, xylene, naphthalene, anthracene, and phenanthrene. These substances, called the coal-tar crudes, form the starting point for the synthesis of numerous products - notably dyes, drugs, explosives, flavorings, perfumes, preservatives, synthetic resins, and paints and stains. The residual pitch left from the fractional distillation is used for paving, roofing, waterproofing, and insulation.

Coal tars are by-products of the carbonization of coal to produce metallurgical coke and/or natural gas. Annual global production of 400 mln t of coke is accompanied by obtaining around 16 mln t of coal tar. Notice that some coke shops (in USA, China) apply process, which doesn' t provide further processing of coal tar, which is simply burnt in the process of coke production, From estimates, only around 50% of coal tar, produced in the world, are subjected to further processing to obtain additional commodity products.

To a large degree, volume of production of coal tar depends on quantity of metallurgical coke, required for production of iron. Blast-furnace process, in spite of development of alternative technologies (for instance, DRI process) will nevertheless find application for many years in future. Notice that introducing technology of coal-dust fuel injection in the blast-furnace process allows to decrease coke consumption in iron production. Nevertheless, expanding iron output encourages demand for metallurgical coke.

Notice that demand for products of coal tar processing (for instance, pitch, used widely in aluminium industry) doesn' t always coincide with demand for coking coal and metallurgical coke. At the same time, one should note a tendency of expanding potentiality of deep processing of coal tar and finding new end-uses of the processing products. That is why importance of coal tar as raw material will increase.