The present work effort relates to an investigation of surfactant-assisted coal liquefaction with the objective of quantifying the enhancement in overall coal conversions and the product quality. Based on the results of a Phase 1 preliminary study on the effect of several surfactants on coal liquefaction, sodium lignosulfonate was chosen as the surfactant for a detailed parametric study to be conducted at JPL using a batch autoclave reactor. These tests primarily related to thermal liquefaction of coal. The results of JPL autoclave test runs showed an increase in overall conversions from 5 to 15% due to surfactant addition over the base case of coal alone. A continuous-flow bench scale coal liquefaction process run was conducted over a 5-day period at Hydrocarbon Research Incorporated (HRI). This test showed that the surfactant is suitable for an industrial continuous recycle process, and does not interfere with the supported catalyst. After the bench scale test, a series of autoclave runs were conducted with coprocessing the surfactant and the Ni-Mo catalyst. These experiments showed that high conversions and product quality can be maintained at milder processing conditions. Based on results of the autoclave test runs, the overall product values were obtained for two stage reactors …