An Improved Concept for Online Coal Analysis

To control the process of coal preparation plants, an online coal analyzer system should be installed on a bypass belt. Compared to main-belt installations an improved accuracy is obtained at a bypass stream, because the material stream can be crushed down to a constant particle size distribution and shaped to a constant cross section profile. To minimize this sample preparation the material running across a bypass stream should be small, but the thin material layers need a re-design of the existing coal analyzers, which are mainly optimized for large material streams on the main-belt. Three major components comprise the system: An XRF elemental analyzer, a microwave moisture and a trace element analyzer for heavy elements. The analyzer system is designed to measure the ash content as well as the complete elemental composition of ash from Sodium to Strontium, moisture, Sulphur, calorific value and Mercury. The bypass system will incorporate a sampling system designed to automatically capture samples that will be sent to laboratories for analysis. These laboratory analyses will be used for two purposes. First for initial analyzer calibration and then to validate analyzer accuracy in the coming years.