Minerals 2015, 5(4), 623-636; doi:10.3390/min5040512
Brown Coal Dewatering Using Poly (Acrylamide-Co-Potassium Acrylic) Based Super Absorbent Polymers
1
School of Applied and Biomedical Sciences, Federation University, Gippsland Campus, Northways Rd, Churchill Vic. 3842, Australia
2
School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Kota Hanumantha Rao
Received: 27 July 2015 / Revised: 4 September 2015 / Accepted: 17 September 2015 / Published: 30 September 2015
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Minerals in Coal)
Abstract
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. View Full-Text
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).
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Devasahayam, S.; Ameen, M.A.; Verheyen, T.V.; Bandyopadhyay, S. Brown Coal Dewatering Using Poly (Acrylamide-Co-Potassium Acrylic) Based Super Absorbent Polymers. Minerals 2015, 5, 623-636.
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