Blended coals for improved coal water slurries

Abstract

Three coal samples of different ranks were used to study the effect of coal blending on the preparation of Coal Water Slurry (CWS). The results show that by taking advantage of two kinds of coal, the coal concentration in slurry made from hard-to-pulp coal can be effectively improved and increased by 3%–5% generally. DLT coal (DaLiuTa coal mine) is very poor in slurryability and the stability and rheology of the resulting slurry are not very good. When the amount of easily slurried coal is more than 30%, all properties of the CWS improve and the CWS meets the requirements for use as fuel. Coalification, porosity, surface oxygenic functional groups, zeta potential and grindability have a great effect on the performance of blended coal CWS. This leads to some differences in performance between the slurry made from a single coal and slurry made from blended coal.