DETERMINATION OF A COAL-PREPARATION STRATEGY USING A COMPUTER-BASED ENUMERATION METHOD

Coals are extracted from mine and upgraded on the surface through wash ing to meet the customers' quality requirements. Coal washing in a pre paration plant seems very simple but involves a complex decision proce ss. A preparation plant is designed with several separate now lines to wash coals of different size-ranges. Each now line consists of severa l stages of processes. Each stage again involves a number of alternati ve operating conditions. The choice of these operating conditions cont rols the quality and quantity of washed coals. In this paper, a comput er based enumeration method is presented to find the operating conditi ons of a preparation plant which maximizes the revenue from the washed coals satisfying the customers' requirements. The solution, of the pr oposed method, seems quite good for implementation. Some test problems and computational experiences are also presented.