SELECTIVE OIL AGGLOMERATION OF BROWN-COAL - A SYSTEMATIC INVESTIGATION OF THE DESIGN AND PROCESS VARIABLES IN THE CONDITIONING STEP

Oil agglomeration is an effective technique for recovering and deashin g coal fines. Conditioning is the most important unit operation prior to agglomeration or size enlargement. In this study, the effects of th e design and process parameters in the conditioning step, which marked ly influences the effectiveness of selective oil agglomeration, on the recovery of agglomerate and the ash and pyritic sulfur content of the agglomerates were investigated. It was found that the success of the process in terms of both recovery and selectivity for a brown coal was highly dependent on the conditioning parameters. In addition, an empi rical equation which relates the recovery with all the conditioning pa rameters was developed. The values calculated by this equation closely matched the experimental values. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.