“…Extensive research at Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center (Bockrath et al, 1984(Bockrath et al, , 1986(Bockrath et al, , 1991Utz et al, 1989) and at Penn State (Davis et al, 1986(Davis et al, , 1989Derbyshire et al, 1986aDerbyshire et al, , 1986bDerbyshire et al, , 1989Stansberry et al, 1987;Burgess and Schobert, 1990;Burgess et al, 1991) has demonstrated the potential of dispersed molybdenum cataly,,,t. In most cases, the catalyst was impregnated on coal as a precursor salt such as sulfided ammonium molybdate or ammonium tetrathiomolybdate, which decomposes upon heating to higher temperatures to form MoS2 (Naumann et al, 1982) and thus disperses MoS2 on coal (Stansberry et al, 1987;Utz et 'al., 1989). These previous investigations have demonstrated that low-temperature catalytic reaction using dispersed molybdenum catalyst can improve coal reactivity.…”