Fuel Processing Technology 87 (2006) 1007 – 1011

www.elsevier.com/locate/fuproc

Change of combustion characteristics of Indonesian low rank coal

due to upgraded brown coal process
Datin Fatia Umar a,b,⁎, Hiromoto Usui b , Bukin Daulay a
a
Research and Development Center for Mineral and Coal Technology, Jl. Jend. Sudirman 623, Bandung 40211, Indonesia
b
Department of Chemical Science and Engineering, Kobe University, 1-1-Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe, 657-850, Japan
Received 25 January 2006; received in revised form 26 July 2006; accepted 27 July 2006

Abstract

Upgraded brown coal (UBC) process has been developed to produce a dry upgraded coal which is comparable with a bituminous coal.
Differential thermal and thermogravimetry analyses (DTA–TG) have been applied to study the combustion characteristics of some Indonesian raw
and upgraded coals produced by the UBC process. DTA–TG profiles of the entire combustion process can be used to predict the combustion
performance of the pulverized coal in industrial furnaces. By using three samples of Indonesian low rank coals coming from Taban, Berau and
Samaranggau, East Kalimantan, which have been upgraded by the UBC process, the ignition temperature (Tig) of the upgraded coals increased.
Whereas the temperature, at which the maximum combustion rate occurs (Tmax), is not so changed. The DTA combustion peaks, which reflect the
specific energy of coals, and the upgraded coals are significantly increased compared to those of raw coals.
© 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Coal upgrading; Combustion characteristics; Specific energy

1. Introduction
Development of clean coal technology is important for the
stability of energy supply. The utilization of low rank coal
(LRC), such as lignite and sub-bituminous coal, is important as
well as that of high rank coal (HRC). However, the LRC has a
problem in spontaneous combustion, and difficulty in transpor-
tation and storage because this coal by nature has a high
moisture content. As a result, LRC has a low calorific value and
a price which is cheaper than that of HRC.
Only the limited amounts of LRC have been used due to its
low calorific value, high moisture content, low thermal effi-
ciency, being rich in oxygen and high tendency to spontaneous
combustion. Therefore, LRC needs to be upgraded to make its
characteristics resemble those of HRC so that the value of the
⁎ Corresponding author. Research and Development Center for Mineral and
Coal Technology, Jl. Jend. Sudirman 623, Bandung 40211, Indonesia. Tel.: +62
22 6030 483; fax: +62 22 6038 027.
E-mail addresses: darinf@tekmira.esdm.go.id, datin_fatia@yahoo.com
(D.F. Umar).
0378-3820/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.fuproc.2006.07.010
coal per its ton is increased not only in the domestic but also for
international markets. However, the question is whether LRC
can be upgraded into a form of energy, which is economically
transportable and safe in storage. One of these methods is the
upgraded brown coal (UBC) process.
UBC process has been developed as the pre-treatment
process of BCL (brown coal liquefaction) based on the slurry
dewatering process [3]. The condition of the process at temp-
erature of about 140 °C and pressure of 0.35 MPa is much milder
compared to other upgrading methods. The addition of a low
sulfur wax residue (LSWR) of about 1% is very important to
prevent the re-absorption of moisture. For long distance
transportation, the UBC powder needs to be briquetted by
using a double roll briquetting machine without the addition of a
binder. The diagram of the operating procedure of the UBC
process can be seen in Fig. 1.
Many earlier works about UBC have been performed in an
autoclave at a bench scale unit (BSU) of 0.1 ton/day in capacity.
The result of the feasibility study of the commercial based BSU
proves that the UBC process will be able to produce a coal
having a quality similar to HRC and an upgraded coal which has
1008 D.F. Umar et al. / Fuel Processing Technology 87 (2006) 1007–1011

Fig. 1. The diagram of the UBC process.

a competitive price in the international market [7]. The pro- amount of samples is available or when it is impractical to test
cessing cost and the selling price of the product have been large quantities of fuel at the existing installation [4].
studied by using the Discounted Cash Flow Rate of Return
(DCFROR) method [3]. The processing cost was calculated at 2. Experimental
8.5 US $/ton of the product and the selling price was calculated
The coal samples which were used in this study have been collected from
at 40.25 US $/ton. This figure would be reasonable in con-
three mining areas with different moisture contents. They are known as Taban,
sideration of the cost of run-of-mine coal with 22.3% moisture at Berau and Samaranggau coal. All of the coals were characterized as sub-
18 US $/ton. bituminous coals with inherent moisture content respectively of 15.35%,
In order to get engineering and economical data to construct 16.13%, and 22.33% in an air dried basis as can be seen in Table 1.
a commercial plant and product evaluation, the UBC process in
pilot scale with 5 ton/day in capacity has been built and operated 2.1. UBC process
in Palimanan, Cirebon. This paper reports the change of the
The UBC pilot plant consists of five main sections, they are coal preparation,
combustion characteristics of the upgraded coal of Taban, Berau slurry dewatering, coal–oil separation, oil recovery and upgraded coal briquetting
and Samaranggau, East Kalimantan due to the UBC process. [1]. The outline of each section is as follows.
Understanding of the combustion characteristics aids in design
and maintenance of the boiler helps to maximize combustion • Coal preparation
efficiency and assists in reducing carbon particle emissions. In this section, the raw coal was milled below 3 mm particle size by a
Thermal analysis data can be applied not only to the charac-
terization of different coals, but also to the evaluation of com- Table 1
bustion performance at high temperatures and heating rates. Characteristics of the raw coals (air dried basis)
One of these techniques is differential thermal analyzer (DTA) Analyses Coals
and thermogravimetric (TG). Taban Berau Samaranggau
DTA and TG, in monitoring respectively the rate of mass loss
Inherent moisture, wt.% 15.35 16.13 22.33
and the relative mass loss in air as a function of temperature, Ash, wt.% 4.42 6.36 2.15
have been shown to be an effective tool to study the combustion Volatile matter, wt.% 40.68 37.20 38.05
behavior of coal [2]. Since only a small size of the sample is Fixed carbon, wt.% 39.55 40.31 37.47
required to analyze, the combustion profile is most useful to Total sulfur, wt.% 0.14 0.56 0.10
Calorific value, cal/g 5431 5324 5048
evaluate the burning properties of fuel when only a small
 D.F. Umar et al. / Fuel Processing Technology 87 (2006) 1007–1011 1009

Table 2
Characteristics of the upgraded coals (air dried basis)
Analyses Coals
Taban Berau Samaranggau
Inherent moisture, wt.% 5.49 4.81 5.65
Ash, wt.% 5.39 6.81 2.61
Volatile matter, wt.% 46.13 46.69 47.67
Fixed carbon, wt.% 42.99 41.69 45.07
Total sulfur, wt.% 0.18 0.48 0.16
Calorific value, cal/g 6625 6274 6310

hammer mill and stored in a coal bunker. The coal which has been milled
then was sent to a slurry maker tank.
• Slurry dewatering
Fine coal was mixed with kerosene and LSWR to prepare slurry in a slurry

Fig. 3. TG curves for the raw and upgraded coals.

• Coal–oil separation
• Oil recovery
Fig. 2. DTA curves for the raw and upgraded coals.
preparation tank. The mixing ratio of kerosene and coal was about 1.2–1.5
depending on the raw coal characteristics. The slurry was sent to a
dewatering vessel via an evaporator where the moisture content of the raw
coal was reduced by heating. More than 90% of the moisture in the coal was
removed here. Afterwards, the dewatered slurry and the evaporated water
were separated in a gas–liquid separator and the separated water was utilized
in the heating of the evaporator after reaching its temperature level in a steam
compressor by adiabatic compression. Dewatered slurry can be obtained by
depressurizing down to atmospheric pressure in a slurry receiver. As
dewatering proceeds in the evaporator, LSWR was preferentially adsorbed
onto the inner surface of the pores to disable the active points in the pores.
In this section, a screw decanter was applied to separate oil from the
dewatered slurry. Oil that occurred as a free liquid in the slurry remained in
the coal micro-pore. Separated cake was handled as a solid and sent to a
dryer. A mechanical separator roughly separates free liquid in a slurry.
A steam tube dryer recovers the remaining oil in the coal pores as the
separated cake moves to the oil recovery section. Passing contact with a
carrier gas which flows as a counter current and heated indirectly from steam
tubes evaporates the oil fraction from the separated cake producing dry coal.
1010 D.F. Umar et al. / Fuel Processing Technology 87 (2006) 1007–1011

Table 3 this process was conducted at mild temperature. Furthermore,

Combustion parameters based on the DTA–TG analysis the third peaks that show the highest of all the upgraded coals
Item Coals were significantly increased. The increase of the third DTA
Taban Berau Samaranggau peaks of all the upgraded coals characterized that the major heat
Raw Upgraded Raw Upgraded Raw Upgraded KPC release in the combustion of upgraded coals has taken place.
Based on this fact, it seems that the heating values of the
Tig, °C 248 262 249 254 232 270 327
Tmax, °C 384 386 451 391 393 436 495 upgraded coals were higher than those of the raw coals.
Rmax, mg/min 0.29 0.42 0.29 0.34 0.32 0.31 0.28 Fig. 3 shows the TG curves of the raw and upgraded coals
Tbo, °C 757 766 720 745 747 722 583 and illustrates the relative weight loss. Weight loss below
150 °C is related to the removal of moisture, and that above of
150 °C is due to the combustion of volatile matter and char [6].
The evaporated oil was recovered by condensation and the recovered oil was Table 3 shows the summary obtained for the combustion
reused as recycled oil for the next slurry dewatering section. Powdered UBC parameters from the DTA–TG. A bituminous coal from Kaltim
was discharged from the outlet of the dryer at about 170 °C as the primary
product. Prima Coal (KPC) was also described as a reference [5].
• Upgraded coal briquetting The Tig value corresponds to the ignition temperature of the
The hot UBC powder which has been produced by the steam tube dryer was volatile matter. In this study, the Tig of all the upgraded coals
sent to a double roll press briquetting machine to be briquetted without the increased. The slightly increased value in Tig indicates that the
addition of a binder. The UBC briquettes were stored in a product yard and decrease in the volatile matter due to the UBC process was not
some samples were taken to be characterized. The characteristics of the
upgraded coals can be seen in Table 2.
obviously changed.
The increase of Tig is ascribed to the decrease in the volatile
2.2. Combustion characteristics matter, since the ignition of higher rank coals is controlled by
the volatile content. However, it is difficult to cite a general
DTA–TG test has been carried out by using a Shimadzu DTG-60 apparatus. comparison between higher and lower rank coals, because the
The raw and upgraded coal samples to be milled become under 75 μm in size. ignition of a low rank coal is largely influenced by the reactivity
This size has been chosen because it is used at pulverized fuel power plants. The
of oxygen. In general, those coals with low ignition temperature
sample weight of 5 mg was placed in a platinum cell, air flow rate was 25 ml/min
and heating rate was 10 °C/min. Maximum experimental temperature was and high mass loss in the low temperature range can be con-
800 °C. From the DTA–TG curves, a number of combustion parameters can be sidered as easy to ignite and burn out.
derived, such as ignition temperature (Tig), maximum combustion rate Temperature at the maximum combustion rate (Tmax) is
temperature (Tmax), maximum combustion rate (Rmax) and char burn out related to the coal reactivity, and the reactive coals have a lower
temperature (Tbo).
Tmax. From Table 3, it can be seen that the Tmax of the
upgraded Taban coal was slightly increased. While in the
3. Results and discussion upgraded Berau and Samaranggau coals the Tmax was slightly
decreased. The Tbo of the upgraded Taban and Berau coals
DTA curves of the raw and upgraded coals are shown in which reflects the char characteristics increased and for the
Fig. 2. The curves illustrate heat differentiation which was upgraded Samaranggau coal it decreased due to the upgrading
released during the test. There are three DTA peaks for all the treatment. Compared with the char combustion characteristics
raw coals. The first and second DTA peaks appear around 60 °C of the high rank coal such as being bituminous, the char
(endothermic) and 330 °C (exothermic) due to the vaporization characteristics of the upgraded coal are widely different from
of moisture and the combustion of volatile matter. The third the char characteristics of the bituminous natural coal. The
peak (exothermic) represents the combustion of char. bituminous coal usually has high Tbo. The Rmax, which in-
For all upgraded coals, the first peaks were significantly dicates the maximum combustion rate, in the Berau and Taban
decreased because of the removal of moisture during the UBC upgraded coals is higher and that of the Samarangau upgraded
process. The second peaks, which correspond to the removal of coal is slightly lower than that of the raw coals. It expressed that
volatile matter are not changed due to the UBC process, because the Berau and Taban upgraded coals were easier to burn.

Table 4
Calculated and measured HHV of the raw and upgraded coals
Item Coals
Taban Berau Samaranggau
Raw Upgraded Raw Upgraded Raw Upgraded
Inherent moisture, % adb 15.35 1.91 18.03 4.81 22.33 4.65
Ash yield, % 6.91 3.92 3.51 3.79 6.07 5.28
DTA maximum peak, μV 477 648 418 472 603 743
A/TGAi, μV s/mg 63,784 88,163 55,162 71,108 67,110 103,630
HHV, MJ/kg 22.74 27.32 22.29 26.27 22.81 28.37
HHVcalc, MJ/kg 23.45 26.80 22.26 24.46 23.91 28.92
 D.F. Umar et al. / Fuel Processing Technology 87 (2006) 1007–1011
Since the area under the DTA curve is interpreted as the heat
change during the whole process, the DTA curve can be used to
estimate heat which was released during the combustion
process, which corresponds to the high heating value of coal.
In this study, the relationship of the high heating value (HHV,
MJ/kg) and the area under the DTA curve, A (μV s) is
represented as Eq. (1) with a correlation coefficient of r = 0.92:
HHVcalc ¼ 12:83461 þ ð1:59d10−4 A=TGAiÞ ð1Þ
The calculated and observed HHV is shown in Table 4. It can be
seen that the HHV of all the upgraded coals is significantly
higher than that of the raw coals based on the higher peaks of the
upgraded coals.
Table 4 indicates that the HHVs which were calculated from
the DTA analyses are different from the HHVs which were
measured using a bomb calorimeter according to the ASTM
Standard D-3286. It might be explained by the deviation of Eq.
(1) which was used. It is reflected by a low correlation value
between A/TGAi and HHV which was measured.
4. Conclusions
UBC process can produce upgraded coals with better
combustion characteristics compared to those of raw coals.
1. The ignition temperature (Tig) of all the upgraded coals
increased. The slight increase in Tig indicates that the
decrease in the volatile matter due to the UBC process was
not obviously changed.
2. The temperature at maximum combustion rate (Tmax) of the
upgraded Berau and Samaranggau coals slightly decreased,
whereas that of upgraded Taban coal slightly increased.
Therefore the reactivity of the upgraded coals almost has no
change compared to that of raw coals.
3. The char burn out temperature (Tbo) which reflects the char
characteristics obtained for the upgraded Taban and Berau
1011
coals increased and the upgraded Samaranggau coal de-
creased. Compared to the char characteristics of the high rank
coal, the char characteristics of the upgraded coal were widely
different.
4. The Rmax, which indicates the maximum combustion rate,
in the Berau and Taban upgraded coals is higher and that of
the Samarangau coal is lower than that of the raw coals. It
expressed that the Berau and Taban upgraded coals were
easier to burn compared with that of raw coal.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the JSPS Ronpaku fellow-
ship program, and Dr. Balia, M.L., the head of R&D Center for
Mineral and Coal Technology (tekMIRA) for making this research
possible. Thanks also go to the staff of the coal laboratory of
tekMIRA and to Dr. Mustafa, Y., Mr. Indartono, Y.S., Mr. Nguyen
H.P. and Mr. Ikeda, Y., for their full assistance during the
laboratory work.
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