FINE COAL AND THREE PRODUCT DRY BENEFICIATION WITH VIBRATION AND DOUBLE-DENSITY FLUIDIZED BEDS

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MECHANISM AND APPLICATION OF COAL DRY BENEFICIATION WITH AIR-DENSE MEDIUM FLUIDIZED BED

The mechanism of beneficiation with air dense fluidized bed has been theoretically studied in the paper. Focusing attention on the misplacing resources in separation process, the misplacing effects are divided into two parts called respectively as misplacing effect of viscosity and misplacing effect of motion. The proposed separation theory can reasonably explain the results of separation in different fluidization states. Experimental results in pilot and commercial plants showed that the air dense medium fluidized bed is a high efficiency dry cleaning technique. The dynamic stability of fluidized bed density is directly affected by the variation of fine coal content in fluidized bed and can be controlled in expected range through measurement of fluidized bed density and adjusting of split flow rate. With air dense medium fluidized bed, various coals of size 50—6 mm can be efficiently beneficiated. The separation density can be adjusted between 1.2—2.2 g/cm 3, and the probable error E p value is about 0.06.

Motion analysis of waste rock in gas-solids fluidized bed in coal dry beneficiation

Through the analysis of forces acting on the waste rock in the gas solid fluidized bed, the waste rock velocity equations and displacement equations in the gas solids fluidized bed were achieved and the influential factors of the waste rock motion in the fluidized bed were studied in this paper. The conclusions show that the primary factors influencing the waste rock motion are the waste rock grain size and the scraper velocity according to the computer simulation. This has provided the theoretical foundation both for improving the separating effect and ascertaining the length of the separating cell.

DEVELOPMENT OF COAL DRY BENEFICIATION WITH AIR-DENSE MEDIUM FLUIDIZED BED IN CHINA

In China more than two-thirds of available coal reserves are in arid areas, where, to beneficiate the run-of-mine coal, there is not enough water resource required by conventional processing. Developing efficient dry beneficiation technology is of great significance for efficient coal utilization in China, notably the clean coal technology (CCT). The dry coal beneficiation technology with air-dense medium fluidized bed utilizes air-solid suspension as beneficiating medium whose density is consistent for beneficiation, similar in principle to the wet dense medium beneficiation using liquid-solid suspension as separating medium. The heavy portion in feedstock whose density is higher than the density of the fluidized bed will sink, whereas the lighter portion will float, thus stratifying the feed materials according to their density. In order to obtain efficient dry separation in air-dense medium fluidized bed, stable fluidization with well dispersed micro-bubbles must be achieved to ensure low viscosity and high fluidity. The pure buoyancy of beneficiation materials plays a main role in fluidized bed, and the displaced distribution effect should be restrained. The displaced distribution effects include viscosity displaced distribution effect and movement displaced distribution effect. The former is caused by viscosity of the fluidized bed. It decreases with increasing air flow velocity. Movement displaced distribution effect will be large when air flow rate is too low or too high. If medium particle size distribution and air flow are well controlled, both displaced distribution effects could be controlled effectively. A beneficiation displaced distribution model may be used to optimize beneficiation of feedstock with a wide particle size distribution and multiple components in the fluidized bed. The rheological characteristics of fluidized beds were studied using the falling sphere method. Experimental results indicated that the fluidized bed behaves as a Bingham fluid. The plastic viscosity and yield stress can be obtained by measurement of the terminal settling velocity of spheres and linear regression of the experimental data. Both plastic viscosity and yield stress increase with increasing size of the fluidized particles. The drag coefficient can be calculated with favorable agreement with experimental data. The first dry coal beneficiation plant with air-dense medium fluidized bed was established by CUMT with an output of 320000 t·a-1 and a probable error Ep value up to 0.05 was achieved. The plant was accepted by the Chinese government in June, 1994. Since then, new applications have been found including a 700000 t·a-1 dry coal beneficiation plant put up for commercial testing. To realize coal dry beneficiation of full size range of 300-0 mm, further research on dry coal beneficiation of different size fractions has been under way at the Mineral Processing Research Center of CUMT, leading to the following results: Dry beneficiation technology with a vibrated air-dense medium fluidized bed for fine coal of size fraction 6-0.5 mm Ash content was reduced from 16.57% to 8.35%, with yield up to 80.20% and Ep value up to 0.065. Coal dry beneficiation technology with a deep air-dense medium fluidized bed for >50 mm coal An Ep value up to 0.02 was achieved. This technology is of great value for waste removal from 300-50 mm large feedstock, especially for big surface mines in China. Coal triboelectric cleaning technology for <1 mm pulverized Coal Coal is comminuted down to 320 mesh (0.043 mm) to fully liberate the embedded minerals, yielding an ultra-low ash coal (less than 2%). Currently a pilot system with triboelectric cleaning has successfully passed technical appraisal. Three-product beneficiation technology with dual-density fluidized bed This technology yields three products: clean coal, middling and tailing, with the following typical results: Ep value of 0.06-0.09 for the upper layer with a density of 1.5-1.54 g·cm-3 and Ep value of 0.09-0.11 for the lower layer with density of 1.84-1.9 g·cm-3.

Characteristics of fluidization and dry-beneficiation of a wide-size-range medium-solids fluidized bed

Wide-size-range medium-solids are used in a modularized coal beneficiation demonstration system with a gas-solid fluidized bed. The characteristics of fluidization and dry-beneficiation of the medium solids were studied. The numerical simulation results show that 0.15–0.06 mm fine magnetite powder can decrease the disturbances caused by the bubbles. This is beneficial to the uniformity of the gas-solid interactions and thus to the uniformity and stability of the bed density and height. The experimental results show that, with an increase in the fine coal content in medium solids, both the fluidization quality and the beneficiation performance of the bed decreased gradually. When the fine coal content was no more than 13%, a relatively high superficial gas velocity increased the beneficiation efficiency. When the content was more than 13%, part of the fine coal was separated, leading to product layers. The separation efficiency was therefore gradually decreased. The models for predicting the bed density standard deviation and the probable error, E, value were both proposed. The E value can reach to 0.04–0.07 g/cm^3 under the optimized experimental parameters. This work provides a foundation for the adjustment of the bed density and the separation performance of the modularized 40–60 ton per hour dry coalbeneficiation industrial system.

Modularized dry coal beneficiation technique based on gas-solid fluidized bed

A 40-60 t/h modularized dry coal beneficiation process with a novel method to control the bed was designed around a gas-solid fluidized bed separator. Furthermore, the hydrodynamics of medium-solids consisting of wide-size-range magnetite powder （0.3-0.06 ram） and 〈1 mm fine coal were numerically studied. The simulation results show that the fluidization performance of the wide-size-range medium-solid bed is good. The separation performance of the modularized system was then investigated in detail using a mixture of 〈0.3 mm magnetite powder （mass fraction of 0.3-0.06 mm particles is 91.38 %） and 〈1 mm fine coal as solid media. The experimental results show that at separation densities of 1.33 g/cm^3 or 1.61 g/cm^3, 50-6 mm coal can be separated effectively with probable error, E, values of 0.05 g/cm^3 and 0.06 g/cm^3, respectively. This technique is beneficial for saving water resources and for the clean utilization of coal.

A method to improve fluidization quality in gas-solid fluidized bed for fine coal beneficiation

Dry coal separation has become essential in China because it does not consume water and it reduces environmental pollution. In this study, a method for improving fluidization quality in a fluidized bed separator using a micropore sponge is proposed. The separator is used for fine coal beneficiation. The pressure drop across the distributor and bed fluidization characteristics were analyzed to evaluate fluidization quality. The beneficiation efficiency for fine coal was further investigated by using a laboratory-scale fluidized bed with and without a micropore sponge. With the sponge, the highest pressure drop fluctuation factor decreased from 0.23 to 0.16, indicating an improvement in density stability. The modified separation method reduced the ash content of a sample of fine coal from 23.83% to 10.70%. The probable error efficiency value E for -6 + 3 mm coal was 0.12g/cm^3, close to the efficiency error values reported for other dry-beneficiation techniques. The separation results show that using a sponge in the fluidized bed can readily improve the efficiency of fine coal beneficiation.

RHEOLOGY OF GAS-FLUIDIZED BED

Coal dry beneficiation with fluidized beds belongs to dry dense m ediu m concentration . Therheology is im portant for studying the behavior of an object settling in gas fluidized beds . Inthis paper , The viscosity of fluidized beds w as measured using falling spheres . The rheologi cal characteristics of fluidized beds can be described with Bingha m fluid m odel . The efficientviscosity of fluidized beds can be calculated and plastic viscosity and yield stress of fluidizedbed can be obtained by linearly regressing experi mental data . The calculated results are veryagreeable with the experim ental data .

COAL DRY BENEFICIATION TECHNOLOGY IN CHINA:THE STATE-OF-THE-ART

In China, coal is the major source of energy and its leading role in energy consumption would not change in the next 50 years. Coal preparation is the essential component of Clean Coal Technology. In China more than two-thirds of available coal reserves are in arid areas, which results in the unfeasibility with conventional wet processing for coal preparation. The uniqueness of dry coal beneficiation technology with air-dense medium fluidized bed is discussed in this paper and a detailed survey of the current status of theoretical study, commercial application and development of the new technology is given in this paper.

Progress in developments of dry coal beneficiation

China’s energy supply heavily relies on coal and China’s coal resource and water resource has a reverse distribution.The problem of water shortages restricts the applications of wet coal beneficiation technologies in drought regions.The present situation highlights the significance and urgency of developing dry beneficiation technologies of coal.Besides,other countries that produce large amounts of coal also encounter serious problem of lack of water for coal beneficiation,such as American,Australia,Canada,South Africa,Turkey and India.Thus,dry coal beneficiation becomes the research hot-points in the field of coal cleaning worldwide in recent years.This paper systematically reviewed the promising research efforts on dry coal beneficiation reported in literature in last 5 years and discussed the progress in developments of dry coal beneficiation worldwide.Finally,we also elaborated the prospects and the challenges of the development of dry coal beneficiation.

Moving Behavior of an Object in Gas-Solid Fluidized Beds

The settling behavior of coarse particles in a gas-solid fluidized bed was experimentally studied by using magnetic tracer. It is well known that the calculation of terminal velocity is of interest in dense medium separation. However, this problem has not been completely solved up to now. In this work, the terminal velocity of an object mov-ing in a gas-solid fluidized bed was experimentally measured and theoretically calculated. The experimental results in-dicated that the plastic viscosity and yield stress of the bed increase as the size of fluidized particles increases, but it varies little when some coarser particles are mixed with the fluidized particles. The resistance to a rising object was an order magnitude greater than that to a settling object. The efficient buoyancy on a flaky object, which lies flatly on the gas distributor, was much less than that calculated by the Archimedes principle. The object does not always rise or set-tle with minimal projective area owing to radial motion of the fluidized particles. But in the lower part of the bed, the bar-shaped objects were likely with minimal projective area rising or settling.