Dry Beneficiation of Thermal Coals in India

DRY BENEFICIATION OF THERMAL COALS IN INDIA The proposed project involves a multi-disciplinary team that includes two U.S. universities, one Indian University, an equipment manufacturer, a plant design company, and several specialty consultants. The primary objective of this project is to enhance the energy efficiency and economics of transporting, processing and utilizing coal in India through the industrial application of a dry deshaling technology known as the FGX separator. This approach will (i) improve energy utilization due to reduced requirements for transporting, processing and burning high-ash rock, (ii) reduce emissions of fly ash and air pollutant precursors of environmental concern such as arsenic, selenium, chromium and mercury, and (iii) free capacity in the currently overloaded infrastructure of railways and power stations in India. A secondary objective will be to develop one or more complimentary deshaling processes for treating coal fines (3-6 mm topsize) that are less efficiently upgraded by the FGX separator. Both of these activities will seek to optimize the design and operating parameters of dry deshaling to provide efficient high density separations while recovering practically all of the total energy from the run-of-mine feed coals. The project will be conducted in two phases. Phase 1 will involve coal characterization and pilot-scale testing of various dry coal cleaning methods while efforts in Phase 2 include engineering, installation and evaluation of a commercial plant.