Scientists of Tomsk Polytechnic University have developed a manufacturing technology of coal pellets for the benefit of a customer from Kemerovo. The work of shift to industrial manufacturing is in progress. The technology is planned to be introduced.
The feature of the technology lies in the ratio of additive binders in the form of bran and coal dust. The development received a patent for invention, the results are confirmed by an independent laboratory and certified. The main feature of the obtained pellets is high physical strength that allows shipping them for long distances.
“European countries are refusing a coal-fired power industry, the same process is beginning in Russia too, however, not so rapid. Due to these factors, the price is declining and there is a need to manufacture products and not to sell raw material. Pellets are very convenient for domestic and automatic boilers in this respect,” Roman Tabakaev, Research Fellow of the TPU Butakov Research Center, says.
The main task of the researchers lay in obtaining solid pellets resistant to failure during shipping, at the same time, an additive binder would not afflict environmental damage during combustion and would not considerably increase the cost of a finished product. The pellets are manufactured by a briquetting plant. Capacity is 1 t per hour. Scientists are currently adjusting the technology for industrial manufacturing. The major challenge lies in a complete shift of laboratory to industrial conditions with the preservation of capacity and volumes.
“We adjust our technology to already existing plants. As a result, we could preserve the volumes in the manufacturing, however, one more stage was added — deliquefaction of a finished product. The pellets are simultaneously heated and moulded in laboratory conditions. The process takes 5 minutes per 1 pellet on average. The processing time reduces in the industrial conditions and the finished product has not enough time to dry.
We managed to find such a manufacturing algorithm, applying that the processing time does not increase and the volume remains the same. According to the preliminary calculations, the capacity of an industrial plant might be 10 t per hour,” Roman Tabakaev explains.
The scientists passed the obtained results to the customer, who will select equipment and design a manufacturing line.