Dry Cleaning, an Affordable Separation Process for Deshaling Indian High Ash Thermal Coal

Abstract

Coal continues to play a major role in the economic development of India, especially in conventional power generation plants. The wet beneficiation process for coal cleaning is currently the predominant method of purification of coal in the world. However, dry beneficiation of coal has obvious advantages over wet processes. The potential of deshaling high ash Indian thermal coal with FGX separator has been evaluated in this paper. The problems caused by high ash content in Indian thermal coal are reviewed. The evaluation has been performed on raw coal from Adani by simulation study of different deshaling process options. Regardless of the types of mineral matter, a clean product having acceptable market quality was generated and pure rock removal into the reject stream was achieved with little coal loss by FGX separator. The simulation results show that FGX separator has the capability of maximizing the reject amount of high-density rock prior to transportation and processing. This paper also provides an overview of raw coal quality, FGX dry separator working mechanism, and process simulation of deshaling. Furthermore, it discusses the potential usage of dry separation in coal industry of India.