Improvement of storage, handling, and transportability of fine coal. Quarterly technical progress report No. 5, January 1, 1995--March 31, 1995

The Mulled Coal process was developed as a means of overcoming the adverse handling characteristics of wet fine coal without thermal drying. The process involves the addition of a low cost, harmless reagent to wet fine coal using off-the-shelf mixing equipment. Based on laboratory- and bench-scale testing, Mulled Coal can be stored, shipped, and burned without causing any of the plugging, pasting, carryback and freezing problems normally associated with wet coal. The objectives of this project are to demonstrate that: the Mulled Coal process, which has been proven to work on a wide range of wet fine coals at bench scale, will work equally well on a continuous basis, producing consistent quality at a convincing rate of production in a commercial coal preparation plant; the wet product from a fine coal cleaning circuit can be converted to a solid fuel form for ease of handling and cost savings in storage and rail car transportation; and a wet fine coal product thus converted to a solid fuel form, can be stored, shipped, and burned with conventional fuel handling, transportation, and combustion systems. During this reporting period, virtually all of the technical activities and progress was made in the areas of circuit installation and startup operations. Work in these activity areas are described