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.