Release Analysis of Coal

Abstract

Washing of fines is more problematic than the washing of coarse coal. One of the perceived barriers in large scale application of flotation in the cleaning of Indian coking coal is the absence of benchmarking. Release analysis is the counterpart in froth flotation to float and sink analysis in the gravity concentration of coal. Thus it provides a benchmark for the coal flotation actually carr-ied out in plants. The present work has been carried out with a LVC coal following the BS 7530 procedure of release analysis. Reagents used include MIBC as the common frother and n-dodecane and a synthetic collector, as the two colle-cting agents. Current published research indicates that with LVC coal only about 20- 30% yield at 18-19% ash cont-ent could be obtained. However, in the present work yields, up to 62% at about the same ash content could be obtained.