The effect of microwave pretreatment on the oil agglomeration of coal

This thesis consists two parts. In the first part, oil agglomeration experiments were carried out to enrich the lignite coal obtained from Tunçbilek Ömerler underground mine. In the experiments, 4 different binding fluids such as kerosene, mineral oil, diesel oil and vegetable waste oil were used and parameters such as suspension pH, stirring speed, oil concentration and agglomeration time were investigated in detail. The success of the agglomeration process was evaluated by the ash content and combustible recovery (CR%) of the agglomerates which were obtained from the experiments. The best results were obtained with vegetable waste oil, mineral oil, diesel oil and kerosene respectively. In the experiments using vegetable waste oil, 7.9% the ash removal was achieved and the agglomerates with 5.9% the ash content were obtained with 90.6% the CR. Ash removal for mineral oil, diesel oil and kerosene was 58.5, 50 and 41.5 (%), respectively, while agglomerates with the ash content of 12.2%, 14.7% and 17.2% were obtained with 81.4%, 69% and 60.5% of CR, respectively. In the second part, the effect of microwave pretreatment on the oil agglomeration of coal was investigated. For this purpose, the oil agglomeration experiments were performed on the coal sample which was subjected to microwave pretreatment at different powers and times. The oil agglomeration experiments were carried out under conditions where optimum results were obtained in the first part. When the results were examined, after microwave pretreatment some mass loss occurred in the coal and the ash content of the coal increased. FTIR analyses of oils, before and after microwave pretreatments coal samples and agglomerates were performed and investigated comparatively. After 4 minutes of microwave application at 600 watt, the agglomerates containing 16.5% ash (feed of ash 35.7%) were obtained from agglomeration of coal with 59.2% of CR in the presence of kerosene. Agglomerates containing 13.2% ash content were obtained from vegetable waste oil with 85% of CR.