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FINE COAL DRYING AND PLANT PROFITABILITY

Conference Paper · October 2012

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FINE COAL DRYING AND PLANT PROFITABILITY

M. K. Mohanty1 and H. Akbari2

1
Professor; 2PhD Student
Department of Mining and Mineral Resources Engineering
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Carbondale, IL 62901.

G.H. Luttrell, Professor, Mining and Mineral Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.

Abstract

This paper describes the increased plant revenue that can be achieved by coal preparation plants
by using a suitable drying technology to significantly (by ~50%) lower the product moisture
content of the fine clean coal fraction. The equalization of incremental inert (i.e., combined ash
and moisture) content approach and real plant feed washability data for an Illinois basin coal
have been utilized to estimate the potential increase in plant yield that can be achieved for a
simple two circuit plant by the above mentioned reduction in moisture content of the fine clean
coal product. Computer simulation results indicate that the overall plant yield of a typical coal
preparation plant can be potentially increased by 5.74% if the moisture content of the clean coal
product can be further reduced by 50%, i.e., from the ~18% level commonly achieved by the best
available mechanical dewatering processes, such as screen-bowl centrifuges, vacuum disc filters
or plate-and-frame filter presses to ~9% with the use of a suitable fine coal drying technology.
With the substantial reduction in the moisture content and thus the inert content of the fine clean
coal product, the specific gravity-cut of the coarse coal circuit can be increased from 1.47 to
1.69, resulting in the majority of the above mentioned yield improvement for the overall plant
while still maintaining the desired heat content specification of the total clean coal product.

The Parsepco Drying Technology (PDT) and Nano Technology Dryer (NTD), two recently
developed drying technologies, have shown the feasibility of providing the above mentioned
moisture reduction of the fine clean coal product. The PDT dewaters the moist coal on a woven
steel belt fitted with medium wave infrared radiators (IR) in a negative pressure environment,
whereas the NDT utilizes molecular sieves to absorb the excess moisture from fine coal. These
two emerging drying technologies along with several other commercially available coal drying
technologies, more commonly used for low-rank coal, have been reviewed in this publication for
their potential integration into higher rank coal preparation plant circuits.

COAL DRYING PRINCIPLE

Coal drying generally refers to evaporating the water trapped in coal particles and thereby
lowering the moisture content of coal. Commonly, moisture content in coal is categorized as
surface moisture and inherent moisture. However, a comprehensive list of five of these
categories, as reported by Osman et al. (2011), includes interior adsorption water, located in the
micro pores and micro capillaries within each coal particle; surface adsorption water, located on
individual particle surface; capillary water, located in the capillaries of coal particles; inter-
particle water, located in small crevices found within particle aggregates; and adhesive water

1
contained in the film around the surface of particle aggregates. The first three categories
constitute what is commonly referred as inherent moisture, whereas the last two are included in
the surface moisture category. Most of the surface water can be removed using some type of
mechanical dewatering systems, whereas removal of the inherent moisture requires some type of
drying method.

The majority of the surface moisture content of fine coal is usually removed in coal preparation
plants by mechanical dewatering systems, such as screen-bowl centrifuges, vacuum disc filters,
horizontal belt filters, or plate-and-frame filter presses; however, removal of inherent moisture
from fine coal is not a usual practice. In very specific cases needed to satisfy the overall moisture
specification, convective thermal drying is the only method commonly utilized to remove
residual surface moisture and at times a part of the inherent moisture content of fine coal. The
mostly used thermal drying system is the fluidized bed dryer, which uses coal, oil or natural gas
as the fuel source to heat the intake air stream (Pratton et al. 2012). The amount of fuel required
depends on the amount of water content of the fine coal fed to the dryer and the desired moisture
content of the product. However, thermal dryers require a substantially large capital and
installation cost and also a large operating and maintenance cost. That is why they are rarely
used in the coal preparation plants.

Irrespsective of the drying method used, each fine coal type will have a drying charateristic curve
as a function of drying temperature, hot air (gas) velocity and pressure envirment. A typical
drying curve (shown in Figure 1), as described by De Korte and Mangena (2004) indicates three
distinctly different time periods: the initial increasing drying rate period followed by a constant
drying rate period and a falling drying rate period. As shown, the moisture reduction rate reduces
significantly after the removal of all surface moistures in the constant drying rate period.

Figure 1. Typical drying curve for fine coal

During the initial period the wet coal is heated from the ambient temperature to the process
temperature maintained inside the dryer. Heat energy is transferred to the coal particles resulting
in the evaporation of the contained moisture. The rate of evaporation and thus the drying rate
increases rapidly with the removal of most of the surface moisture during this initial period. This
causes the exponential decay in the moisture content during this period. At the end of this initial

2
period, when the heat transferred from the source (hot air, gas etc.) becomes equal to the the
cooling caused by evaporation of surface water from coal particles, the drying rate stops
increasing and cotinues at a constant rate through out this second period. This is shown as the
constant dry rate period with a horizontal line for the drying rate and and a straight inclined line
with the same slope over this entire second period for the moisture content change. Once all the
the surface moisture from coal particles is evaporated, drying of the ineherent moisture begins
and that is marked by a substantially reduced drying rate in the falling rate period, shown in
Figure 1. The cost of drying of the inherent moisture becomes prohibitively expensive due to the
exteremly slow drying rate observed while removing moisture from the micro pores and micro
capillaries of individual coal particles. The authors believe that a suitable drying technology can
be used to remove almost all the surface moisture content of the mechanically dewatered fine
coal product in a coal preparation plant at a relatively low cost. This is how the moisture content
of the fine clean coal can be brought down to almost the same range of values as that of
mechanically dewatered coarse coal. It is true that such change in commercial practice will
require significant capital investment and increase operating costs for coal preparation plants.
However the resulting reduction in the moisture content of the fine clean coal product would
allow suitable increase in the specific gravity-cut achieved in both coarse and fine coal cleaning
circuits and thus significantly increase the plant clean coal yield while maintaining the heat
content of the plant product at the original level. It is believed that the resulting increase in plant
revenue will far offset the additional cost of integrating the suitable drying technologies to a
conventional coal preparation plant and thus, increase plant profitability.

POTENTIAL BENEFITS OF DRYING TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION TO A COAL

PREPARATION PLANT

Coal mining companies are usually paid on the basis of the heat content of coal they deliver.
Therefore, most of the mining companies utilize coal preparation plants to remove both in-seam
and out-of-seam dilution from the run-of-mine coal to produce clean coal having a low ash value.
Since most of the coal preparation plants today operate with wet separation processes, the
addition of water to the run-of-mine coal is a common practice followed in these plants. Today's
coal preparation plants attempt to dewater the clean coal product using the best available
mechanical dewatering processes based on the particle size distribution of the fine coal and the
desired ultimate moisture content. However, due to the inherent difficulty of removing water
from fine coal, the final moisture content of the fine clean coal product is usually 2 to 3 times
higher than that of the coarse clean coal product generating from the same plant, although the
product ash values are in a similar range. This is why, although the fine coal proportion of the
total clean coal tonnage produced from a plant is in 10 to 15% range, as much as 1/3rd of the
total moisture content in the clean coal product is contributed by the fine coal fraction. Through
this publication, the authors attempt to show the potential plant profitability that can be achieved
by using some of the emerging fine coal drying technologies to further lower the moisture
content of the mechanically dewatered fine coal product of a coal preparation plant to nearly the
same level as that of the mechanically dewatered coarse coal product.

To explain the potential benefits that could be realized in a realistic plant environment, a
computer simulation exercise has been conducted using the real feed washability data obtained
from a coal preparation plant operating in the Illinois basin. To keep the calculations relatively

3
simple, only two cleaning circuits, i.e., coarse and fine coal circuits of the plant, have been
considered for this analysis. The plant cleans the +2 mm size coarse coal and 2 mm x 75 m size
fine coal using dense-medium cyclones and coal spirals, respectively. The two circuit plant
cleans 900 tons per hour (tph) of raw coal having an overall ash value and moisture content of
21.85% and 5.65%, respectively. The feed washability data for both coarse and fine coal are
listed in Table 1. The as-received heat content of the feed coal has been calculated based on the
strong correlation between the heat content (Btu/lb) and the combined ash and moisture content
of a variety of Illinois basin coals, shown in Figure 2. The product moisture contents of coarse
and fine clean coal for the simulation exercise have been assumed to be 6% and 18%, which is
quite comparable to the moisture content that is commercially achieved in the coal preparation
plants in the Illinois basin.

The computer simulation exercise targeted to maximize the plant yield while producing an
overall product heat content of 11900 Btu/lb (on as-received basis). The equalization of
incremental inert content (combined ash and moisture) approach of plant optimization was
pursued for two different cases: the first case being the conventional plant without using any
drying technology, whereas the second case made use of a suitable drying technology to lower
the moisture content of mechanically dewatered fine coal by 50%, i.e., from 18% to 9%. For
both cases, the coarse clean coal moisture content was set at 6%, which is quite comparable to
the moisture content that is commercially achieved in the coal preparation plants in the Illinois
basin.

Table 1. Washability data for the coarse and fine coal obtained from a coal preparation
plant operating in the Illinois basin

Coarse Coal (86.96% of the total feed; ash: 22.57% ; moisture: 5.02% )
Individual Cumulative
Sink Float % Wt dry % Ash dry Btu/lb (ar) % Wt % Ash dry Btu/lb (ar)
1.30 44.12 6.35 12609 44.12 6.35 12609
1.30 1.40 26.81 10.84 11910 70.93 8.06 12345
1.40 1.50 5.68 19.58 10552 76.62 8.92 12212
1.50 1.60 1.74 26.25 9516 78.36 9.26 12152
1.60 1.70 0.83 32.21 8590 79.19 9.57 12114
1.70 1.80 0.69 34.67 8208 79.88 9.76 12080
1.80 1.90 0.58 41.13 7204 80.46 9.97 12045
1.90 2.00 0.89 48.13 6116 81.35 10.61 11980
2.00 2.10 1.31 61.23 4080 82.67 11.98 11855
2.10 17.33 76.80 1660 100.00 22.57 10088
Fine Coal (13.04% of the total feed; ash: 17.01% ; moisture: 9.97% )
Individual Cumulative
Sink Float % Wt dry % Ash dry Btu/lb (ar) % Wt dry % Ash dry Btu/lb (ar)
1.30 62.00 4.54 12120 62 4.54 12120
1.30 1.40 13.90 12.17 10935 75.9 5.94 11903
1.40 1.50 5.90 17.48 10110 81.8 6.77 11774
1.50 1.60 2.50 25.75 8824 84.3 7.33 11686
1.60 1.70 0.50 30.73 8051 84.8 7.47 11665
1.70 1.80 0.90 35.32 7337 85.7 7.76 11619
1.80 1.90 0.80 41.29 6410 86.5 8.07 11571
1.90 2.00 0.40 46.68 5572 86.9 8.25 11544
2.00 2.10 0.60 49.40 5149 87.5 8.53 11500
2.10 12.50 76.34 963 100 17.01 10183

4
Figure 2. Strong correlation of the heat content of a variety of coal samples collected from
the Illinois coal basin with the combined ash and moisture content of the coal
samples

Figures 3 and 4 illustrate the clean coal yield versus the overall inert content and incremental
inert content relationships obtained for both case 1 and 2, respectively. For case 1, the
incremental inert content for both coarse and fine coal circuit was equalized at 25.5% to achieve
the desired heat content >11900 Btu/lb for the overall plant product. As indicated in Table 2, the
heat content of the individual products from the coarse coal and fine coal circuits were 12081
and 10799 Btu/lb, respectively, and the total clean tonnage produced was 673 tph. The
significantly lower heat content of the fine coal product was the result of the high moisture
content of 18% of this product. Case 2 simulations show the increase in clean coal production
that can be achieved by lowering the fine coal moisture content by 50%, i.e., from 18% to about
9% level by using a suitable fine coal drying technology. As shown in Table 2, using the plant
optimization approach, clean coal tonnage can be increased to nearly 725 tph, while still
maintaining the heat content of the overall clean coal product at the original level of 11937
Btu/lb. Thus, the additional 52 tph of clean coal can be produced by suitably increasing the
specific gravity-cuts of both coarse and fine coal circuits to 1.69 and 1.74, respectively. In spite
of the significant increase in the incremental inert content of both circuits to 39.1% level, the
overall inert content of both products and thus, the overall heat content could be maintained at
the original level. At a rate of $50/ton of Illinois basin clean coal and 6000 working hours per
year, the additional clean coal production would result in an increase in annual revenue by $15.6
million. This will require capital investment in a suitable technology to dry nearly 100 tph
mechanically dewatered fine clean coal from 18% moisture to 9% level. This can be achieved by
three full-scale Parsepco Dryers having a capital cost of $1 million each (Buisman 2012).
Clearly, the above mentioned increase in annual revenue would pay off the additional capital
investment for the coal dryers in a few months time.

5
 (a)

(b)

Figure 3. The clean coal yield versus incremental inert (moisture+ash) and overall inert
content relationships for the coarse and fine coal circuit of a coal preparation
plant not using any coal drying technology

6
 (a)

(b)

Figure 4. The modified clean coal yield versus incremental inert (moisture+ash) and overall
inert content relationships for the coarse and fine coal circuit of a coal
preparation plant simulated with the use of drying technology to further lower
the moisture content of the fine clean coal product from 18% to 9%.

7
Table 2. Potential increase in clean coal tonnage that can be achieved by integrating a
drying technology into the fine coal circuit of a simple two-circuit plant preparing
Illinois basin coal

Without Drying Technology Tph (dry) Tph (ar) Moisture% (ar) Ash% (dry) Btu/lb (ar) Inert% (ar) Increm. Inert% (ar)
Coarse 561.4 597.2 6 8.76 12081 14.8
Fine 62.2 75.9 18 5.01 10799 23.0 25.5
Total Clean Coal 623.6 673.1 7.4 8.39 11937 15.7

With Drying Technology

Coarse 588.6 626.19 6 9.53 11961 15.5
Fine 89.7 98.6 9 7.68 11783 16.7 39.1
Total Clean Coal 678.3 724.8 6.4 9.29 11937 15.7

COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE DRYING TECHNOLOGIES

Most of the commercially used coal drying technologies are of convective thermal drying type,
in which drying occurs when a hot gas (air) is allowed to be in contact with moist coal. The
circulating hot gas (air) also acts as a carrier for the removal of evaporated moisture from the
dryer (De Korte and Mangena 2004). Drying of coal is more widely practiced commercially for
low rank coals, having very high inherent and surface moisture contents. Pikon and Mujumdar
(2006) provide a detailed discussion on various commercially used coal dryers in the Handbook
of Industrial Drying. Jangam et al. (2011) provides a comparative analysis (Table 3) of the
advantages and disadvantages of the state-of-the art coal drying technologies. Various past
studies (Pikon and Mujumdar 2006; Bongers et al. 1998; Wilson et al. 1997; Suwono and
Hamdani 1991; Mujumdar 1990) indicate the significant advantages associated with superheated
steam drying. These include reduced risk of fire hazard/spontaneous combustion due to the
absence of oxygen, increased drying rate and energy efficiency and reduction in dust emission.
These types of superheated steam dryers could be very suitable for large-scale fine coal drying
applications at coal preparation plants.

EMERGING FINE COAL DRYING TECHNOLOGIES/METHODS

Extensive studies conducted in the food processing industry in the past indicate the superiority of
radiation-based drying methods (Chou and Chua 2001; Das et al. 2004; Wang and Sheng 2006).
One of these studies indicates that drying time can be reduced by 50 to 60% by the use of
infrared radiation based drying system in comparison to that of the convective air-based system.
It is known that some of the Infrared Radiation (IR) systems can evaporate more than 3 liter of
water in a vacuum environment while consuming only 1 kWh of energy in comparison to only
0.5 liter of water that is evaporated using the thermal dryers utilizing convective heating
mechanism (Fisher 2012).

IR drying systems transfer thermal energy to the materials to be dried in the form of
electromagnetic waves. Past studies indicate medium wave infrared radiation (MIR) to be more
effective than short wave or long wave IR in removing water from a substrate (Buisman 2010).
A new highly efficient drying system has recently emerged in the form of the Parsepco Dryer
with the combination of MIR, a steel belt dryer and a pin mixer.

8
Table 3. Comparative analysis of the conventional drying technologies available for coal
drying

Coal Dryer Type (listed in Key Advantages Key Disadvantages

alphabetical order)
Belt dryer (Pikon and
Mujumdar 2006; Li 2004)
Fluid bed dryer (Karthikeyan
et al. 2009; Li 2004)
Horizontal agitated bed dryer
using jacket or screw heating
(Mujumdar 2006)
Pneumatic dryer (Li 2004)
Pulsed combustion dryer
(Ellman et al. 1966)
Rotary dryer (Clayton et al.
2007; Li 2004; Hatziylberis
2000)
Rotary tube dryer (Pikon and
Mujumdar 2006; Li 2004)
Spouted bed dryer
(Karthikeyan et al. 2009)
Superheated steam using
various types (Bongers at al.
1998; Wilson et al. 1997;
Suwono and Hamdani 1991;
Mujumdar 1990)
Vibrated bed dryer
Source: Jangam et al. 2011
compact construction; simple
design; lower temperature
drying
intensive drying due to good
mixing
indirect heating through shaft
and jacket; very low drying
medium flow rate needed
simple construction
short drying time; high drying
efficiency; environmentally
friendly operation
drying along with
disintegration; internal heating
with coils; no fire hazard
indirect heating; no fire
hazard; high efficiency
very good heat and mass
transfer rate
high thermal efficiency; no
danger of fire or explosion;
energy efficient; suitable for
high capacity continuous
operation
low gas velocity required for
fluidization
limited capacity; large foot
print
high pressure drop; attrition
high power requirement; high
maintenance
attrition
noise problem; scale-up
issues; fire hazard
high maintenance
capital intensive
scale-up issues; limited
particle size
only suited for high capacity
applications; lot of heat loss in
the exhaust
more moving parts

This Parsepco Drying Technology (PDT) dries fine coal/mineral feed from ~25% moisture to
below 10% level utilizing ceramic MIR emitter boards on a negative pressure environment of a
steel belt.

Parsepco Drying Technology

As shown in the schematic diagram in Figure 5, the PDT consists of a woven steel belt on which
the moist fine coal is dried using MIR emitter boards from the top and a vacuum system from the
bottom of the belt. Steel belts are unaffected by variances in temperatures and can easily accept
high temperatures. Where normal plastic or material belts would stretch or deform at elevated
temperatures, steel belts can easily withstand high temperatures. While polyesters and
polyamides are hydrophilic, the steel is neutral; thus the steel belts provide a better drainage of
water than the plastic belts. In addition, because of the non-hydrophilic property of steel, cake

9
does not tend to adhere to the steel belts at the discharge end unlike the plastic belts. The
negative pressure environment on the belt created by vacuum greatly assists the transfer of the IR
energy into the substrate removing all vapor downward and away from the MIR emitters. In
cases of extremely fine clean coal below 75 m, a pin mixer (shown in Figure 6) is utilized to
prepare the feed for the dryer in the form of 3 to 6 mm size micro-granules. More details about
the PDT is available elsewhere (Buisman 2010), which reports some of best drying results
achieved from the Parsepco Dryer for extremely fine (-45 m) coal tailings. Product moisture
contents of 9.51% and 13.73% were achieved by drying the dewatered tailings product obtained
from a plate-and-frame filter press.

Pin Mixer Product or

plant dewatered fine
coal with up to 30%
Moisture

Dry Coal

Figure 5. Parsepco Dryer schematic (Fisher 2012)

Feed

Product

Figure 6. Schematic of a pin mixer (Buisman 2010)

10
Nano Drying Technology

The Nano Drying Technology (NDT™) drying system, a patent pending process (Bland et al.
2011), uses molecular sieves to extract the majority of the reminaing moisture from a
mechanciallly dewatered fine clean coal product from about 25% in the feed to less than 10% in
the product. The molecular sieves are mixed with fine coal paticles at a desired sieve-to-coal
ratio for a suitable retention time to absorb almost all the surface moisture from the fine coal
aggregates. After this step, as shown in the schematics of batch and pilot-scale process steps in
Figures 7 and 8, the soaked molecular sieves are screened off leaving behind the nearly dry fine
coal product. The pores of the molecular sieves are sufficiently large to draw in and absorb water
molecules, but too small to allow any of the fine coal particles from entering the sieves. Some
molecular sieves can absorb up to 42% of their weight in water (Bland et al. 2011). In the
subsequent step, the water absorbed in the molecular sieves are evaporated using a heating
system to regenerate those for their reuse in the next cycle. Greater details of the the NDT™
drying system is available elsewhere (Bratton et al. 2012). The same study reported product
moisture contents in the range of 5 to 10% for both -0.6 mm and -0.15 mm coal having feed
moisture contents in the range of 22 to 28%.

Dry
Dry high-moisture
high-moisture Separate
Separate Reuse
Reuse molecular
molecular
coal
coal fines
fines by
by dewatered
dewatered coal
coal sieves
sieves after
after
combining
combining with
with fines
fines from
from thermal
thermal
molecular
molecular sieves.
sieves. molecular
molecular sieves.
sieves. regeneration.
regeneration.

Rotary Laboratory Microwave

Mixer Sieve Dryer

Figure 7. Schematic of the batch-scale NDT process steps (Bratton et al. 2012)

Feed Coal/Sieve
Coal Contactor

Make-Up Coal/Sieve Dry

Sieves Screen Coal

Water Sieve
Vapor Regenerator

Figure 8. Schematic of the pilot-scale NDT process steps (Bratton et al. 2012)

11
Dielectric Heating and Drying

Dielectric heating refers to heating by high frequency electromagnetic radiation, i.e., microwave
frequency and radiofrequency waves (Menendez et al. 2010). In order to avoid the interference
with microwave bands used for telecommunications, the wavelengths for industrial heating and
other applications are regulated by national and international authorities. Thus, the main
operating microwave frequency for industrial/domestic applications in the majority of the
countries is 2.45 (±0.05) GHz (Meredith 1998). Microwave drying is well known for its
advantages, such as volumetric heating and faster drying rates. The Drycol Process, developed
by DBAGlobal- Australia is based on the use of microwave drying for coal. A 15 tph plant
operates to dry low rank coal from 28% to 12% moisture content product (Graham 2008). The
presence of microwave (MW) absorbing impurities in coal can result in hot spots and can also
result in fire hazards during drying. Intermittent MW drying is a possible option to remove
moisture efficiently during the final stages of coal drying (Jangam et al. 2011).

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The wide-scale practice of drying of coal to lower its moisture content has been so far restricted
mostly to low rank coal having significantly higher proportion of inherent moisture, which
cannot be removed by mechanical means. However, results reported in this publication based on
a detailed plant optimization analysis conducted using the approach of equalization of
incremental inert content of each cleaning/dewatering circuit of a two-circuit plant, indicates that
suitable coal drying technologies should also be integrated to the bituminous coal and anthracite
preparation plants of the future. Some of the emerging drying technologies, based on superheated
steam, infrared heating, microwave heating and/or molecular-sieve based nano-technology
drying may be quite useful in lowering the moisture content of the mechanically dewatered fine
clean coal product by removing only its residual surface moisture content. Attempting to lower
inherent moisture content of fine coal may not be quite viable in most cases, due to the extremely
slow drying rate achieved during the last stage of drying period, i.e., the falling rate period.
However, the residual surface moisture content of fine clean coal could be nearly eliminated by
the use of high efficiency emerging drying technologies while adding to the profitability of the
coal preparation plant and thus, the mining operations.

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