Methods of Improving Oil Agglomeration

A simple thermodynamic analysis suggests that oil can spontaneously displace water from coal’s surface if the coal particle has a water contact angle greater than 90°. However, the clean coal products obtained from laboratory-scale dewatering-by-displacement (DbD) test work assayed moistures substantially higher than expected. These high moisture contents were attributed to the formation of water-in-oil emulsions stabilized by coal particles. Four different approaches were taken to overcome this problem and obtain low-moisture agglomeration products. These included separating the water droplets by screening, breaking emulsions with ultrasonic energy, breaking agglomerates with ultrasonic energy, and breaking agglomerates using vibrating mesh plates. On the basis of the laboratory test work, a semi-continuous test circuit was built and tested using an ultrasonic vibrator to break the water-in-oil emulsions. The most promising results were obtained agglomerates were broken using the ultrasonic probe and the vibrating mesh plates. Tests conducted on flotation feed from the Kingston coal preparation plant gave a clean coal product containing 1% by weigh of moisture with a 94% combustible recovery. The separation efficiency of 93% is substantially higher than results achievable using froth flotation. When agglomerates formed from thermal coal from the Bailey coal preparation plant were broken using either ultrasonic energy or vibrating mesh plates, the obtained results were very similar: clean coal products assayed less than 5% moisture with separation efficiencies of 86% in average.