Polish experiences in fine coal processing

The amount of fine-grain waste containing grains of coal, coke, coke breeze, etc. is significant and it is not being visibly reduced. Particularly significant are quantities of coal slurries generated from the current operations of hard coal mines and settlers previously handed over to local authorities as reclaimed land. The available reported quantities of coal slurries vary widely and range from 0.5 (current production) to over 20 million tonnes (mainly collected in operational and reclaimed settlers).

The group of fine-grain fuel sources include, inter alia, coal slurries, including sediments, flotation tailings from coal beneficiation, brown coal waste dust, coke breeze from the processes of gasification of residues from crude oil processing and fluidized bed gasification of solid fuels, coke breeze from decarburization of fly ash, coke dust, waste from production and processing of carbon and graphite products. The use of these fine-grain materials and waste often encounters serious difficulties, inter alia due to the high water content, heterogeneity, fragmentation, low and variable energy characteristics. With the aim to rationalizing their use in recent years technologies have been extensively developed and implemented for recovery of fine-grain materials and waste to produce commercial fuels. (paper)