Coal Tar:solvent in water or not

[rakeen]

Is coaltar solvent in water or not? I've found in a book that if we "mix"(!) the "excess gas(may be vapour)" coming out of the distilled coal(it was about the destructive distillation of coal, and we're trying to make coal gas), in water, the mixed coaltar in that "gas" will be filtered! Then we again purify that gas with sulphuric acid and ferrous hydroxide and finally get coal gas. If coaltar isn't solvent in water how can we filter it out from that "mixed gas"?

[Bijoy]

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es00049a025

check this out