Brown coal dewatering using poly (Acrylamide-co-potassium acrylic) based super absorbent polymers
- Authors: Devasahayam, Sheila , Ameen, Anas , Verheyen, Vincent , Bandyopadhyay, Sri
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Minerals Vol. 5, no. 4 (2015), p. 623-636
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- Description: With the rising cost of energy and fuel oils, clean coal technologies will continue to play an important role during the transition to a clean energy future. Victorian brown coals have high oxygen and moisture contents and hence low calorific value. This paper presents an alternative non evaporative drying technology for high moisture brown coals based on osmotic dewatering. This involves contacting and mixing brown coal with anionic super absorbent polymers (SAP) which are highly crossed linked synthetic co-polymers based on a cross-linked copolymer of acryl amide and potassium acrylate. The paper focuses on evaluating the water absorption potential of SAP in contact with 61% moisture Loy Yang brown coal, under varying SAP dosages for different contact times and conditions. The amount of water present in Loy Yang coal was reduced by approximately 57% during four hours of SAP contact. The extent of SAP brown coal drying is directly proportional to the SAP/coal weight ratio. It is observed that moisture content of fine brown coal can readily be reduced from about 59% to 38% in four hours at a 20% SAP/coal ratio. © 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Study of Victorian Brown Coal Dewatering by Super Absorbent Polymers using Attenuated Total Reflection Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy
- Authors: Devasahayam, Sheila , Bandyopadhyay, Sri , Hill, David
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Mineral Processing and Extractive Metallurgy Review Vol. 37, no. 4 (2016), p. 220-226
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- Description: A simple and useful method to monitor the water content of coal samples using Attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy is presented. ATR-FTIR analyses of oven-dried and polymer-dried brown coal samples are discussed. The difference spectra indicate that the drying of as-received coal at room temperature using a Super Absorbent Polymer (SAP) removes only 44% of moisture compared to oven drying at 105 °C. As the SAP does not completely remove the water from the coal the possibility of explosion due to oxidation of the coal powder is greatly reduced. SAP drying is energy and emission efficient compared to oven drying method. At the pH < 5 studied SAP dewatering is dominated by physical processes. The movements in H-bonding observed in ATR-FTIR suggest a physico-chemical process. © 2016 Taylor & Francis.