Generating incremental income through plant optimization and advanced fine coal cleaning

摘要

A coal preparation plant model has been developed and used to determine the techno-economic benefits that can be realized from the application of advanced fine coal cleaning (AFCC) technologies and overall plant optimization. The optimization procedure reveals that the benefits of AFCC technologies is more pronounced for more stringent product quality constraints while simple optimization of the existing plant is sufficient for more relaxed constraints. The idea of optimization and the use of AFCC technologies for improving mine profitability has been demonstrated for a mine producing 3 million tons of Illinois #6 seam coal. Optimization of the existing plant operation has the potential of generating an additional plant yield of 1percent at the same product quality constraint. This yield improvement corresponds to an additional income of