POC-scale testing of an advanced fine coal dewatering equipment/technique: Quarterly technical progress report No. 9, October 1996--December 1996

The advanced fine-coal cleaning techniques such as column flotation, recovers a low-ash ultra-fine size clean-coal product. However, economical dewatering of the clean coal product to less than 20 percent moisture using conventional technology is difficult. This research program objective is to evaluate a novel coal surface modification technique developed at the University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research in conjunction with conventional and advanced dewatering technique at a pilot scale at the Powell Mountain Coal Company`s Mayflower preparation plant located in St. Charles, VA. During this quarter in the laboratory dewatering studies were conducted using copper and aluminum ions showed that for the low sulfur clean coal slurry addition of 0.1 Kg/t of copper ions was effective in lowering the filter cake moisture from 29 percent to 26.3 percent. Addition of 0.3 Kg/t of aluminum ions provided filter cake with 28 percent moisture. For the high sulfur clean coal slurry 0.5 Kg/t of copper and 0.1 Kg/t of aluminum ions reduced cake moisture from 30.5 percent to 28 percent respectively. Combined addition of anionic (10 g/t) and cationic (10 g/t) flocculants was effective in providing a filter cake with 29.8 percent moisture. Addition of flocculants was not effective in centrifuge dewatering. In pilot scale screen bowl centrifuge dewatering studies it was found that the clean coal slurry feed rate of 30 gpm was optimum to the centrifuge, which provided 65 percent solids capture. Addition of anionic or cationic flocculants was not effective in lowering of filter cake moisture, which remained close to 30 percent for both clean coal slurries