COAL ION EXCHANGE TO REDUCE NA LEVELS BY UTILIZING ACID MINE WATER

Abstract

Coal leaching by using mine acid water and solution Mg2+ can reduce the levels of ash and alkali to their needed grade. This demonstrates the ongoing leaching process of ion exchange between the ions contained in coal and with ions contained in the solution. Coal can act as an ion exchanger due to its hollow structure that could contain alkali and earth-alkali ions in its cavities. Thus the alkali ions can be exchanged with other ions in solution. Coal has more adsorption affinity to divalent alkali ions such as Mg2+ and Mn2+ compare to monovalent alkali ions such as Na+. For an ion with the same charge the ion with a smaller volume would be preferred due to the relaxation of matrix contraction within the exchange. The first phase of leaching was conducted to understand the Na content level trend on coal by comparison to Na solution content. The procedure of the study is as follows: first coal is leached with mine acid water, second, the pulp is drained and count the Na, Mg, and Mn content, and third make the graph using the calculation.