The focus of work being performed on Hot Coal Gas Desulfurization at the Morgantown Energy Technology Center is primarily in the use of zinc titanate sorbents; however, prior studies indicated that an alternate sorbent, manganese dioxide-containing ore in mixture with alumina (75 wt% ore 25 wt% Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}) appears to be a strong contender to zincbased sorbents. Manganese, for example, has a lower vapor pressure in the elemental state than zinc; hence, it is not as likely to undergo zinc-depletion from the sorbent surface upon loading and regeneration cycles. Also manganese oxide is less readily reduced to the elemental state than iron; hence, the range of reduction potentials for oxygen is somewhat greater than for zinc ferrite. In addition, thermodynamic analysis of the manganese-oxygen-sulfur system shows it to be less amenable to sulfation than zinc ferrite. Also manganese chlorides are much less stable and volatile than zinc chlorides. Potential also exists for utilization of manganese at higher temperatures than zinc ferrite or zinc titanate. This Seventh Quarterly Report documents progress in bench-scale testing of a leading manganese-based sorbent pellets (FORM4-A). This formulation is a high-purity manganese carbonate-based material. This formulation was subjected to 20 consecutive cycles of sulfidation and regeneration at 900{degrees}C in a 2-inch fixed bed reactor. The sulfidation gas was a simulated Tampella U-gas with an increased hydrogen sulfide content of 3% by volume to accelerate the rate of breakthrough, arbitrarily taken as 500 ppmv. Consistent with thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA) on individual pellets, the fixed bed tests show small improvement in capacity and kinetics with the sulfur-loading capacity being about 22% by weight of the original pellet, which corresponds to approximately 90% bed utilization!