Seed Grant: Economical Recovery of Fly Ash-Derived Magnetics and Evaluation for Coal Cleaning

Project Goal: The overall goal of the proposed project is to demonstrate that high density, magnetic material can be economically recovered from coal combustion ash and be effectively utilized to address the shortage of magnetite used as heavy media for efficient coal cleaning. The project is explicitly relevant to the 2005 Comprehensive Energy Strategy in the following ways. First, the availability of heavy media is essential for efficient coal cleaning. Approximately half of the coal preparation plants in Kentucky utilize heavy media processing to efficiently remove impurities such as ash and pyritic sulfur from mined coal. Removal of these impurities prior to combustion significantly increases the heating value of the coal, reduces the transportation costs by not transporting non-combustible components of the fuel, and reduces the amount of ash and S02 that must be removed from emission streams by the utilities that utilize the coal. Second, by employing heavy media coal cleaning, higher ash content coal can be up-graded into high quality fuel. Coal from thinner, poorer quality seams that require increased quantities of rock to be removed during mining, can be efficiently processed to improve the coal quality. Third, a commitment to environmental quality is demonstrated during both the mining and combustion phases. As previously mentioned, removing most of the impurities prior to combustion reduces the amounts of ash and S02 that must be removed after combustion, thus reducing the amounts of combustion ash and scrubber by-products that must be landfilled and reducing the associated costs. Perhaps more significantly, environmental stewardship is further demonstrated by improving the cost-effectiveness of combustion ash beneficiation, thus increasing potential ash utilization and reducing the amount of ash that must be disposed.