Any coal mining company has got its own specific character of production, preparation and marketing of the extracted fuel. To define the economic reasonability of purchasing a certain kind of equipment for the preparation of coal is an important task for the experts of the company who have to analyze the total range of issues and chose the only option that can efficiently operate for decades with the account of the growing requirements for the quality of coal and environment.
Today it's becoming obvious that the minerals concentration technology, in the basis of which lies the method of separation of coal in the water media or heavy suspension, can't allow the companies to settle a whole range of problems. They have to arrange a big water circulation facility: to clean the recycled water, heat it, maintain the water-settling pits. Great number of wastes formed in the liquid form, results in the formation of real lakes, and some of the slurry ponds are as big as towns. More, these artificial water bodies gradually join rivers that results in the danger of environmental pollution. Especially one should mark out the problems connected with the necessity of dehydration and drying of coal produced by «wet» method of concentration, and the need of heating of big production facilities.
«Dry» methods of concentration of coal that have found a wide use in 1950‑60‑ies, finally vanished as a result of the low efficiency of the technology existing at that time. The construction of the traditional concentrating works is very cost-based for many coal mining companies. As a result we get a closed circle. It is difficult and not profitable to sell unprepared coal due to its high ash content and low price. The construction of the "wet" concentrating facilities (especially for the power-generating coal) is too costly and leads to the significant increase in the net cost of the coal being concentrated. Consequently, as high quality as it is, it wouldn't be easy to sell this coal, since the company has already spent considerable amount on its mining and concentration, so very often the market price doesn't cover the expenditures. There is only one way out: to use such technology for the concentration of coal that would allow to settle the problem of improving the quality of coal in the effective and very cheap way.
The new technology in the field of «dry» concentration suggested by the Novokuznetsk scientist Alexander Kuzmin, can solve two problems - price and quality - at once. The construction and operation of the new concentrating facilities becomes much cheaper than the traditional ones, that is why the produced concentrate has really the lower net cost, but the quality is maximum high. The finishing concentration allows to get the separation of components with the efficiency not less than 96 percent. The final products are distributed with the pitch of 0,1 t per a m3 density-wise.
|
