An attempt to produce blast furnace coke from Victorian brown coal

• Products showed satisfactory compressive strength.
• Reactivity and surface area were much higher than those of coke.
• Coal derived products had lower reactivity than briquette derived products.
• Coal derived products had lower surface area than briquette derived products.
• Products had less graphitic structure than coke.

This paper describes attempts to produce blast furnace coke from Victorian brown coals. The attempted method involves combining a coal-derived binder with the original brown coal or its commercial products, briquettes. Briquetting of these mixtures gave composites that were then carbonized to form coke-like materials. Products were characterized by bulk density, helium density, compressive strength, reactivity, surface area, scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis. It was found that the products have sufficient compressive hardness to be used as coke but are still too reactive to be used in a blast furnace.