Modelling and comparison of fine coal beneficiation with water-only cyclone and spiral

ABSTRACT

In this study, a three-level Box-Behnken design of experiments combined with response surface methodology used to investigate the effects of some parameters of a water-only cyclone (WOC), spiral and WOC-spiral circuit. The actual data collected from the tests were used to construct the empirical models representing clean coal ash and yield as process responses to the independent variables. The significance test of model fit for clean coal ash and yield were performed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results showed that ash content and yield of the clean coal models were significant. The results showed that WOC produced coal with lower ash content, the spiral products resulted in higher yields. It was observed that the WOC-spiral circuit achieved higher yield at equivalent ash contents.

KEYWORDS:

• Coal fines
• water only cyclone
• spiral concentrator
• BBD-RSM
• modelling

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).