The Latest Progress in the Coal-Based Solid Waste Particle Separation

Dear Colleagues,

The separation and quality improvement of coal-based solid waste particles is a key link in promoting the clean transformation of the coal industry and the efficient recycling of resources. With the help of separation technology, a large amount of solid waste such as coal gangue, fly ash, and gasification fine slag can be converted into raw materials with resource utilization value. This not only significantly reduces the ecological and environmental risks caused by solid waste storage, such as land occupation, water and soil pollution, and spontaneous combustion, but also directly assists in ecological restoration and environmental protection. It has profound strategic significance for practicing the circular economy development model and achieving low-carbon and green development goals. At the same time, enriching valuable components such as residual carbon, kaolin, and rare metals in solid waste through separation processes can promote the high-value utilization of solid waste. Its products can be widely used in building material production, chemical raw material preparation, and valuable element recovery, creating significant economic value while reducing dependence on primary mineral resources, with outstanding resource and environmental benefits.

Conventional separation methods are mainly based on the differences in physical properties between solid waste particles, covering technical types such as gravity separation, flotation, and electrostatic separation. Currently, this field is facing a series of new technological challenges. For difficult-to-select solid waste materials with complex components, fine particle sizes, and small differences in physical properties, traditional separation methods have shortcomings such as low separation efficiency and high energy consumption. Therefore, it is necessary to develop efficient ultrafine particle separation technology; we need to accelerate the development of intelligent separation technology that integrates machine vision, intelligent sensors, and artificial intelligence algorithms to achieve the precise identification and efficient separation of target components, and improve the level of process automation. The industry requires new low-cost and low-energy dry separation technologies to meet the application needs of water-scarce areas. In addition, it is necessary to further expand the high-value utilization path of sorted products, such as by developing high-end fillers, functional composite materials and other products, to effectively enhance the added value and resource utilization efficiency of coal-based solid waste.

Therefore, I am pleased to invite you to publish research article, exchanges or comments on the technologies related to coal-based solid waste separation, upgrading and utilization in this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Haisheng Li
Guest Editor

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