Investigation of oil agglomeration behaviour of Tuncbilek clean coal and separation of artificial mixture of coal–clay by oil agglomeration

• The oil agglomeration behaviour of coal was investigated in detail.
• The effects of some parameters for coal agglomeration were evaluated.
• The coal was agglomerated from the artificial coal–clay mixture with high combustible recovery and low ash content.

Oil agglomeration technique is one of the several major physicochemical separation processes in fine particle processing. In this study, the oil agglomeration behaviour of Tuncbilek clean coal was investigated and studied to find operating parameters that would decrease the ash content of the clean coal. The optimum conditions for agglomeration time, kerosene concentration and stirring speed were determined to be 20 min, 31.6 wt.%, and 1500 rpm, respectively. Also, the ash content of the coal could be decreased by the addition of methanol.The separation of various artificial mixtures of coal–clay samples was also investigated under the determined optimum conditions. The coal could be agglomerated with above 80% of combustible recovery. The ash content was nearly the same for all conditions and determined to be approximately 6%. The coal was separated from clay minerals with high combustible recovery and low ash content using selective oil agglomeration technique.

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