VTechWorks staff will be away for the winter holidays starting Tuesday, December 24, 2024, through Wednesday, January 1, 2025, and will not be replying to requests during this time. Thank you for your patience, and happy holidays!

Browsing by Author "Morris, Joshua Powell"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Residual Diesel Range Organics and Selected Frothers in Process Waters from Fine Coal Flotation
    Morris, Joshua Powell (Virginia Tech, 2013-06-06)
    The purpose of this thesis is to examine some of the potential fates of processing reagents in a coal preparation plant.  The focus is specifically on petro-diesel (termed "diesel" in this paper), which is used as a collector in the flotation of fine coal.  Diesel range organics (DRO) and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are measured in aqueous samples using gas chromatography equipped with either a flame ionization detector (GC-FID) or a mass spectrometer (GC-MS).  Samples are subjected to a variety of test conditions in order to understand the behavior of diesel compounds in coal processing streams. Results show that frother and collector reagents are not likely to partition completely to a single fraction of the process slurry.  Further test work has shown that sub-ppm levels of DRO dominated by the water soluble fraction of diesel are expected to be present in process waters; however, PAHs and insoluble DRO may be removed via volatilization and/or degradation.  DRO and PAHs are also expected to be desorbed from coal particles when contacted with fresh water.  Flotation tests have revealed that low levels of DRO are found in both the concentrate and tailings processing streams with slightly higher concentrations being found in the concentrate stream.  From the tests performed in this thesis, it appears as though there is no apparent environmental concern when coal preparation plants are operating under normal conditions.