Direct Combustion of Fine Coal from Coal Waste

Fine coal is a coal waste generated by washing the coal at the mines, and contains as much as 80 wt% water- Due to the lack of cost effective approaches to remove the water from fine coal before feeding into a conventional boiler, the coal producers often choose to discard the fine coal- There are already approximately 2 billion tons of fine coal in abandoned ponds and 500~800 million tons in active ponds in the U-S- with more being produced every year- We propose to directly combust the wet fine coal, without further dewatering step, in a unique process- The heat released is used for production of steam, which drives a turbine to generate electricity- A lab-scale demonstration will be conducted and the process’s economic advantages will be shown in Phase I project-