Investigating the high ash lignite processing with teetered bed separator

ABSTRACT

Teetered Bed Separators (TBS) perform under the effect of numerous operational parameters of importance such as teeter water flowrate (TW) and the pressure set point (SP), which directly influence the performance figures in terms of cut size (D₅₀), cut density (ρ₅₀), and efficiency (Ep). Adjustment flexibility of TBS enables it an important tool to be used in mineral and coal processing and classification applications. The aim of this study is to investigate density-based separation and size classification performance of TBS when an industrial high-ash lignite sample was processed. Results showed that separation performance was better at higher SP values, and increasing TW was providing better separation performances especially at higher ρ₅₀ values. At low SP values, TW was observed to play a critical role in separation performance. Separation performances (Ep) with the size fractions of +2000 µm, +1000 µm, +500 µm, and +200 µm were obtained as 0.08, 0.12, 0.14, and 0.16, respectively. On the other hand, classification performance is observed to be better at low SP values and could also be manipulated by TW.

KEYWORDS:

• Teetered bed separator
• cut density (ρ₅₀)
• cut size (D₅₀)
• lignite
• teetered water rate (TW)
• pressure set point (SP)

Acknowledgments

The authors kindly acknowledge supervising support of Prof.Dr. Levent Ergün during the experimental study and the proofreading support of Anne Oberlink (University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research).

Conflict of interest

There is not a potential conflict of interest, including any personal or other relationships with other people or organizations within the three years of beginning the submitted work, which could inappropriately influence or be perceived to influence their work. All credits on this study belong to its authors. Acknowledging the supervising and proofreading support from experts are deemed necessary by the authors on the grounds of respect so that there were no conflicts of interest.

Role of the funding source

Only the authors were involved in this study, the design, the collection and interpretation of the data, the writing of the report, and the decision to submit the article for publication.