Comparison of Flotation and Screening as Separation Method in Coal Recovery From Tailings by Agglomeration

Dependency of Turkey on foreign energy adversely affects the economy of the country and may cause energy shortage in the near future. As a primary domestic energy source, coal is used for energy production in addition to imported oil and gas. However, significantamount of fine coal is lost together with tailings in coal washeries. Recovering of fine coals from these tailings will make an economiccontribution to country. In the present study, fine coals were recovered from tailings of a coal washery in Turkey by using oil agglomeration method. Flotation was used in agglomerate separation stage of oil agglomeration. Results were compared with that of previousstudy in which agglomerates were recovered by screening. The performance of the process increased sharply when flotation was usedinstead of screening in agglomerate separation stage. A clean coal with 28% ash was recovered from the washery tailings containing55% ash by 85% combustible recovery.

Studies on Clarification of Coal Washery Effluent Using Polymeric Flocculants and Settling Kinetics

Settling tests were conducted on the washery effluent using three types of flocculants namely cationic (Telfloc-3674F), anionic (Magna-1011) and non-ionic (Nalco-83370+). For the study purpose coal washery effluent (having pH of 8.72) was collected from a newly commissioned plant-thickener. Tests were conducted by varying the pH of the pulp at three levels of acidic (4.0), alkaline (11.0) and the natural pH (8.72) of the as collected effluent, besides the flocculent dosages varied at four levels (2, 4, 6 and 8 gpt) for each of the flocculants stated. The results of these tests, estimated in terms of initial settling rate and turbidity indicated that; among the three flocculants tested Telfloc-3674F and Magna-1011 gave best results as compared to Nalco-83370+ flocculent at a washery water pH 8.72. The effect of molecular weight of the flocculants on settling of solids in effluent has been established in terms of the kinetics with a characteristic number for each of the type of flocculants used.

Investigation on the Utilization Of Coal Washery Rejects By Different Microbial Sources For Biogenic Methane Production

High energy consumption and depletion of fossil fuels lead to the introduction of new technologies to produce alternative fuels with fewer emissions of greenhouse gases. The present investigation was focused to utilize the waste coal washery rejects as a substrate to produce biogenic methane under optimum conditions. Experiments were performed to explore the efficiency of non-coal samples (cow dung, distillery anaerobic digester sludge) and coal mines enriched samples in the degradation of coal washery rejects. Further cow dung, distillery anaerobic sludge, and coal washery rejects were taken at various concentrations to develop anaerobic slurry with the capacity to grow under coal. Whereas the anaerobic slurry which contains 1:1:1 of cow dung, distillery anaerobic sludge, and coal washery rejects produced methane of around 55.7%. The coal enriched samples showed the maximum of 22.6% of methane. Subsequently, the best methane-producing anaerobic non-coal consortiums were compared with coal enriched microbial culture in converting coal washery rejects of 10 g/l to methane. Results revealed that cow dung inoculum and coal mine enriched inoculum source produced the nearly same amount of methane. This study suggested that the selected anaerobic slurries and coal enriched sample can utilize sub-bituminous coal washery rejects in methane production. Thus, these consortiums can be applied in converting a large amount of coal washery rejects into methane thus can lead to the reclamation of the site.

Modeling metallurgical responses of coal Tri-Flo separators by a novel BNN: a “Conscious-Lab” development

Tri-flo cyclone, as a dense-medium separation device, is one of the most typical environmentally friendly industrial techniques in the coal washery plants. Surprisingly, no detailed investigation has been conducted to explore the effectiveness of tri-flo cyclone operating parameters on their representative metallurgical responses (yield and recovery). To fill this gap, this work for the first time in the coal processing sector is going to introduce a type of advanced intelligent method (boosted-neural network “BNN”) which is able to linearly and nonlinearly assess multivariable correlations among all variables, rank them based on their effectiveness and model their produced responses. These assessments and modeling were considered a new concept called “Conscious Laboratory (CL)”. CL can markedly decrease the number of laboratory experiments, reduce cost, save time, remove scaling up risks, expand maintaining processes, and significantly improve our knowledge about the modeled system. In this study, a robust monitoring database from the Tabas coal plant was prepared to cover various conditions for building a CL for coal tri-flo separators. Well-known machine learning methods, random forest, and support vector regression were developed to validate BNN outcomes. The comparisons indicated the accuracy and strength of BNN over the examined traditional modeling methods. In a sentence, generating a novel BNN within the CL concept can apply in various energy and coal processing areas, fill gaps in our knowledge about possible interactions, and open a new window for plants' fully automotive process.

Studies on Clarification of Coal Washery Effluent Using Polymeric Flocculants and Settling Kinetics

Settling tests were conducted on the washery effluent using three types of flocculants namely cationic (Telfloc-3674F), anionic (Magna-1011) and non-ionic (Nalco-83370 + ). For the study purpose coal washery effluent (having pH of 8.72) was collected from a newly commissioned plant-thickener. Tests were conducted by varying the pH of the pulp at three levels of acidic (4.0), alkaline (11.0) and the natural pH (8.72) of the as collected effluent, besides the flocculent dosages varied at four levels (2, 4, 6 and 8gpt) for each of the flocculants stated. The results of these tests, estimated in terms of initial settling rate and turbidity indicated that; among the three flocculants tested Telfloc-3674F and Magna-1011 gave best results as compared to Nalco-83370 + flocculent at a washery water pH 8.72. The effect of molecular weight of the flocculants on settling of solids in effluent has been established in terms of the kinetics with a characteristic number for each of the type of flocculants used.

Flotation Performance Analysis on Coal Washery Rejects

Coal washery rejected coals and coal slurries have better options in froth flotation as a separation process. In this study, coal slurry received from Sudamdih coal washery, Jharkhand, India, examined for cleaning through fixed cell flotation. The Petrography study of the feed sample showed the presence of vitrinite, semi vitrinite and liptinite and inertinite as major minerals. General full factorial statistical design package (Minitab V17) was used to develop the regression models for the responses like froth height, froth density, recovery and ash content of clean coal. Results showed that experimental responses like froth height, froth density, recovery and ash content were found to be more sensitive to the frother dosage. The coefficient of correlation (R2) values between the experimental and the predicted values of the flotation responses was found to be >0.98 for all the models. Further, flotation tests were conducted for varying pulp density and its effect on recovery, froth height, ash content, tests with five levels of pulp density (8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13%solids by weight). It found that the coal slurry sample from the study area could be cleaned with sufficient efficiency. The cleaned coal is suitable for powder coal consuming industries.