2014-Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit
SIPS 2014 Volume 2: Mineral Processing
| Editors: | Kongoli F |
| Publisher: | Flogen Star OUTREACH |
| Publication Year: | 2014 |
| Pages: | 446 pages |
| ISBN: | 978-1-987820-04-1 |
| ISSN: | 2291-1227 (Metals and Materials Processing in a Clean Environment Series) |
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Effect of operating conditions on beneficiation of western Canadian coals by Air Dense Medium Fluidized Bed (ADMFB)
Ebrahim Azimi1; Jozef Szymanski1;1UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA, Edmonton, Canada;
Type of Paper: Regular
Id Paper: 372
Topic: 2
Abstract:
The dry physical coal beneficiation method, Air Dense Medium Fluidized Bed (ADMFB) system, can offer an efficient solution for ROM ash removal to improve coal quality and restrict its application issues and footprint. In this study a full-factorial (23) experiment design method was used to study the effect of main operating parameters and reveal their mutual interactions on ADMFB performance when dealing with western Canadian sub-bituminous coals (31% ash). This technique was used to avoid any misleading interpretations based on the traditional one factor at-a-time methods.
The superficial air velocity, U; residence time, T; bed height, H; coal particle size and fluidization medium size were the key influencing parameters affecting the apparatus performance. System separation efficiency and product (clean coal) ash content as well as organic material recovery are selected as response functions. Statistical analysis of the results on the three selected responses determined negative effect of increase of U and T on organic material recovery while H was affecting that positively. Two interactions between U and H, and, T and H were also revealed at 95% confidence level. The U and T had positive and negative effect on product ash content while H had no significant effect. The mutual interaction of T and H was found even more effective on product ash content than the direct effect of T. U and H had positive effect on separation efficiency where T and the interaction between U and T were negatively affecting efficiency. Considering the determined effectiveness of the operating parameters; U=16.5cm/s, T=90s and H=15cm were determined to be the optimum settings. Optimization of separation process resulted in product ash content, recovery and separation efficiency of 13.2%, 67.7% and 48.1% respectively for a feed with 31.5% ash.