Selective oil agglomeration of brown coal: A systematic investigation of the design and process variables in the conditioning step

Oil agglomeration is an effective technique for recovering and deashing coal fines. Conditioning is the most important unit operation prior to agglomeration or size enlargement. In this study, the effects of the design and process parameters in the conditioning step, which markedly influences the effectiveness of selective oil agglomeration, on the recovery of agglomerate and the ash and pyritic sulfur content of the agglomerates were investigated. It was found that the success of the process in terms of both recovery and selectivity for a brown coal was highly dependent on the conditioning parameters. In addition, an empirical equation which relates the recovery with all the conditioning parameters was developed. The values calculated by this equation closely matched the experimental values. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.