Coal desulfurization by bacterial treatment and column flotation. Final report

Abstract

A review of the literature showed that bacterial leaching, using the microorganism Thiobacillus ferrooxidans, was a very effective technique for removing pyrite from coal, as it could dissolve even the finest pyrite particles without the need for expensive reagents or extreme processing conditions. Unfortunately, bacterial leaching is also rather slow, and so the initial goal of this research was to decrease the leaching time as much as possible. However, this still left the bacteria needing approximately a week to remove half of the pyritic sulfur, and so a faster technique was sought. Since it had been reported in the literature that T. ferrooxidans could be used to depress the flotation of pyrite during froth flotation of coal, this was investigated further. By studying the recovery mechanisms of coal-pyrite in froth flotation, it was found that pyrite was being recovered by entrainment and by locking to coal particles, not by true flotation of hydrophobic pyrite. Therefore, no pyrite depressant could be of any significant benefit for keeping pyrite out of the coal froth product, and it was much more important to prevent entrainment from occurring. Countercurrent flotation columns were invented to essentially eliminate entrainment effects, by washing the froth and reducing mixing of the froth and tailings products. Existing flotation columns tend to be quite simple, and in order to give reasonable product quality they must be very tall (typically 30--45 feet). As a result, they have difficulty in handling the high froth volumes which occur in coal flotation, and are awkward to install in existing plants. The bulk of this project therefore concentrated on developing an improved coal flotation column, and testing it under actual plant conditions.