Effect of slurry conditioning on flocculant-aided filtration of coal tailings studied by low-field nuclear magnetic resonance and X-ray micro-tomography

The present work aimed to study the effect of slurry conditioning on flocculant-aided filtration of coal tailings by the analysis of filtration kinetics and filter cake structure.Laboratory filtration tests of the coal tailings showed that both the shear rate and agitation time have significant effects on filtration rate and cake moisture.Moderate agitation at the shear rate of 92 s^-1 was favorable for fast filtration,but high cake moisture was encountered.The low-field 1H nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR)measurements of the filter cake showed that the slurry conditioning has a significant effect on the residual water in large pores and a negligible effect on the residual water in small pores.The X-ray micro-tomography(XRM)measurements indicated that the filter cake formed at the shear rate of 92 s^-1 has more macro-pores and higher porosity than that formed at the shear rate of 53 s1,hence more residual water was entrapped in filter cake.The slurry conditioning in the presence of flocculant will change the structure of filter cake and affect the filtration performance.There was a paradox between fast filtration rate and low filter cake moisture.The findings enable better understanding of the effect of slurry conditioning on flocculant-aided filtration of coal tailings.

Settling,consolidation and shear strength behaviour of coal tailings slurry

The volume change and shear strength behaviour of tailings slurry with the changes in gravimetric moisture content is important to effectively utilise the storage volume and analysis of dam failure potential.Consolidation testing of tailings from a slurry-like to soil-like state is a critical task,and conventional consolidation apparatus does not have the capability of doing such testing,as the tailings slurries contain high water content.Settling tests conducted on slurries having a 25%solids concentration showed very low efficiency;final sediment was still slurry-like.An intrinsic point was identified based on pore water pressure dissipation during consolidation tests in a slurry consolidometer that can define two states of the tailings i.e.slurry-like and soil-like.In the slurry-like state,the volume change was greater for Slurry 2 than Slurry 1,while the inverse was observed in the soil-like state.The evolution of peak vane shear strength with the changes in moisture content was almost similar for both samples and obeyed the power function.Regression models have been developed and validated to predict the shear strength of materials at any gravimetric moisture content or void ratio.

Uniaxial compressive behaviour of a FRP standing support made of mine wastes

Twenty-seven specimens were tested to investigate the uniaxial compression behaviour of an innovative standing support for underground space applications.The innovative standing support consisted of an external fibre reinforced polymer(FRP)jacket and the infill column made of cementitious grout,tailings and coal wash rejects.Effects of the FRP layers number and water to the cementitious grout(w/g)ratio were evaluated.Test results indicated that lower w/g ratios produced stronger infill columns.With FRP confinement,the standing support demonstrated strain-hardening loading characteristics with a significant improvement in both strength and ductility.The highest strength and strain of the specimens achieved was 58.4 MPa and 11.8%respectively.Compared with the unconfined specimens,the confinement with four FRP layers increased the specimen strength and associated strain up to 3.6 and 27.0 times respectively.A correlation between the compressive strength of the infill material and the ultrasonic pulse velocity was also investigated.Furthermore,a simple design-oriented model was proposed to predict the peak strength and the corresponding strain of the innovative standing support.

Systematic physicochemical characterization,carbon balance and cost of production analyses of activated carbons derived from(Co)-HTC of coal discards and sewage sludge for hydrogen storage applications

Hydrothermal carbonization(HTC)technologies for producing value-added carbonaceous material(hydrochar)from coal waste and sewage sludge(SS)waste might be a long-term recycling strategy for hydrogen storage applications,cutting disposal costs and solving waste disposal difficulties.In this study,hydrochars(HC)with high carbon content were produced using a combination of optimal HTC(HTC and Co-HTC)and chemical activation of coal tailings(CT),coal slurry(CS),and a mixture of coal discard and sewage sludge(CB).At 850℃and 800℃,respectively,with a KOH/HC ratio of 4:1 and a residence time of 135 min,activated carbons(ACs)with the highest Brunauer–Emmett–Teller specific surface(S_(BET))of 2299.25 m^(2)g^(−1)and 2243.57 m^(2)g^(−1)were obtained.The hydrogen adsorption capability of the produced ACs was further studied using gas adsorption isotherms at 77 K.At 35 bars,the values of hydrogen adsorbed onto AC-HCT(AC obtained from HTC of CT),AC-HCS(AC obtained from HTC of CS),and AC-HCB(AC obtained from HTC of the blending of coal discard(CD)and SS)were approximately 6.12%,6.8%,and 6.57%in weight,respectively.Furthermore,the cost of producing synthetic ACs for hydrogen storage is equivalent to the cost of commercial carbons.Furthermore,the high proportion of carbon retained(>70%)in ACs synthesized by HTC from CD and SS precursors should restrict their potential carbon emissions.

Prediction of medium-to-coal ratio effect in a dense medium cyclone by using both traditional and coarse-grained CFD-DEM models

Dense medium cyclone(DMC)is the working horse in coal industry.In practice,it is usually operated under constant pressure and the operational conditions(mainly medium-to-coal(M:C)ratio and oper-ational pressure)need to be adjusted according to coal washability data(mainly coal particle size and density distributions).Nonetheless,until now it is still not well understood how the M:C ratio would affect the performance of DMCs especially under the practical conditions.In this work,the effect of M:C ratio is for the first time numerically studied under conditions similar to plant operation by using both tra-ditional and coarse-grained(CG)combined approach of computational fluid dynamics(CFD)and discrete element method(DEM),called as traditional CFD-DEM and CG CFD-DEM,in which the flow of coal par-ticles is modelled by DEM or CG DEM which applies Newton's laws of motion to individual particles and that of medium flow by the conventional CFD which solves the local-averaged Navier-Stokes equations,allowing consideration of particle-fluid mutual interaction and particle-particle collisions.Moreover,impulse and momentum connection law is used to achieve energy conservation between traditional CFD-DEM and CG CFD-DEM.It is found that under constant pressure,the M:C ratio affects DMC perfor-mance significantly.The specific effect depends on coal washability or coal type.Under extremely low M:C ratio,the phenomenon that high-quality coal product is misplaced to reject is successfully repro-duced,which has been observed in plants in Australian coal industry and called as"low-density tail".Moreover,strategies are proposed to mitigate the"low-density tail"phenomenon based on the model.