Brown Coal Dewatering Using Poly (Acrylamide-Co-Potassium Acrylic) Based Super Absorbent Polymers

Abstract

With the rising cost of energy and fuel oils, clean coal technologies will continue to play an important role during the transition to a clean energy future. Victorian brown coals have high oxygen and moisture contents and hence low calorific value. This paper presents an alternative non evaporative drying technology for high moisture brown coals based on osmotic dewatering. This involves contacting and mixing brown coal with anionic super absorbent polymers (SAP) which are highly crossed linked synthetic co-polymers based on a cross-linked copolymer of acryl amide and potassium acrylate. The paper focuses on evaluating the water absorption potential of SAP in contact with 61% moisture Loy Yang brown coal, under varying SAP dosages for different contact times and conditions. The amount of water present in Loy Yang coal was reduced by approximately 57% during four hours of SAP contact. The extent of SAP brown coal drying is directly proportional to the SAP/coal weight ratio. It is observed that moisture content of fine brown coal can readily be reduced from about 59% to 38% in four hours at a 20% SAP/coal ratio.

Impact of Clay Minerals on the Dewatering of Coal Slurry: An Experimental and Molecular-Simulation Study

“…The cleaning process of coals is generally associated with a significant amount of tailings in the coal preparation plant. Proper disposal of these coal tailings has both environmental and economic benefits through the recovery of fine coals and the reuse of processed water [1]. The fine coal tailings generally contain 20-40% clay minerals in the coal preparation plant [2,3].…”

Plastics—Villain or Hero? Polymers and Recycled Polymers in Mineral and Metallurgical Processing—A Review

“…Superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) offer ambient dewatering of low-grade coals, greatly improving their calorific values and reducing the transport tariffs. Use of SAPs to dewater fine black coals, brown coals and tailings has been reported [ 10 , 11 , 12 ].…”

“…Super absorbent polymers (SAPs) ( Figure 9 ) offer a low energy alternative to de-water brown and fine black coal particles and the tailings [ 10 , 11 , 38 , 39 , 40 ]. SAPs can be cationic, anionic or non-ionic and comprise high molecular weight cross-linked hydrophilic polymers that absorb several tens to hundreds of times their individual mass of water as they expand in size, but still preserve distinct particle identity.…”

“…Osmotic dewatering of brown coals using anionic SAP carried out under ambient conditions has no associated energy penalties. Approximately 57% of water is removed within four hours of SAP contact under ambient conditions [ 11 , 45 ]. This process, in addition to enhancing the calorific value of low-grade coals, greatly reduces the penalties associated with transportation.…”

Mapping of Trace Elements in Coal and Ash Research Based on a Bibliometric Analysis Method Spanning 1971–2017

“…The environmental problems, along with human health problems, caused by the above processes have attracted much public attention. The use of clean coal is becoming one of the key technologies to solve this problem in the future [62,63].…”