POC-scale testing of an advanced fine coal dewatering equipment/technique. Quarterly technical progress report 3, April--June 1995

Economical dewatering of an ultra-fine clean coal product to a 20% or lower level moisture will be an important step in successful implementation of the advanced fine coal cleaning processes. The main objective of the proposed program is to evaluate a novel surface modification technique, which utilizes the synergistic effect of metal ions-surfactant combination, for dewatering of ultra-fine clean coal on a proof-of-concept (POC) scale of 1 to 2 tph. The novel surface modification technique developed at the UKCAER will be evaluated using vacuum, centrifuge, and hyperbaric filtration equipment. Dewatering tests will be conducted using the fine clean coal froth produced by the column flotation units at the Powell Mountain Coal Company, Mayflower Preparation Plant in St. Charles, Virginia. The POC-scale studies will be conducted on two different types of clean coal, namely, high sulfur and low sulfur clean coal. The Mayflower Plant processes coals from five different seams, thus the dewatering studies results could be generalized for most of the bituminous coals. During this quarter, addition of reagents such as ferric ions and a novel concept of in-situ polymerization (ISP) was studied in the laboratory. Using the ISP approach with vacuum filtration provided 25% moisture filter cake compared to 65.5% moisture obtained conventionally without using the ISP. A series of dewatering tests were conducted using the Andritz hyperbaric pilot filter unit with high sulfur clean coal slurry