Synthetic fuel comprising coal dust, water and a reactive organic compound, and a process for making such synthetic fuel

Abstract

The present invention is directed to a synthetic fuel made of coal dust, water and an organic chemical reactive with the coal dust to form a chemical bond with the coal dust upon compacting to provide a product very similar to coal. The inventive product surprisingly in some case provides higher BTU value than coal alone (up to 5 to 1000 BTU per ton more than counterpart coal), does not produce the waste ash at the users' facility of inorganic chemicals (and many organic chemicals such as tar) and can solve a moisture problem of coal dust and give even more increased green strength.

Description

[0001] The present invention is directed to a synthetic fuel, also referred to as synthetic coal. These fuels are useful in providing higher BTU content to fuel users, most often electric public utilities. The fuels involved also meets all requirements of Title 29 of the Internal Revenue Code.BACKGROUND OF INVENTION[0002] Coal has been, since the early 19.sup.th Century, a commercially important fuel. Appropriately processed, coal is an excellent high BTU provider and is relatively inexpensive due to the fact that it is readily available in the United States. Coal is relatively abundant in the environment but its chemical composition may vary from deposit to deposit and state to state.[0003] From the earliest days of the U.S. coal mining industry (ongoing to even today), the grinding processing of coal obtained by mine workers done at the mine head (or more recently inside the mine itself) has generated coal dust as a waste product. On average, approximately 5% of all coal mined bec...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0020] The present invention is directed to a synthetic fuel made of coal dust, water and a defined organic chemicals reactive with the coal dust to form a bond with the coal dust upon compacting to provide a product very similar but chemically different than coal. The inventive product surprisingly in some case provides higher BTU value than coal alone (up to 5 to 1000 BTU per ton more than counterpart coal), does not produce the waste ash at the users' facility of inorganic chemicals (and many organic chemicals such as tar) and when the organic chemical selected is a "water absorbing" reactive polymer not only solve a moisture problem of coal dust but by gives even more increased green strength.

Problems solved by technology

On average, approximately 5% of all coal mined becomes such an unusable waste.

This dust is not desired by traditional coal customers, cannot be shipped without costly containment apparatus, and unlike the slag waste of metal processing, can not be stored as hills of slag waste of the type which surround steel, iron or smelting plants.

Lagoons are essentially dead unused space hostile to fish and recreation and ugly reminders of America's past.

Coal dust itself is also very human-unfriendly.

It is the proximate course of black lung disease, dirty living and working conditions and is poisonous to man, animals and fish.

Several decades ago it was first realized that the existing coal lagoons were leaking out into rivers, creeks and city water supplies and that such leaking was almost impossible to stop.

Also the drying out of lagoons, a more common phenomena than once thought possible, often now results in "black dust" storms which damage existing structures and machinery and injure the quality of life in mining communities.

Many companies have settled on tar as the ingredient to fix or bind the dust but this is not satisfactory to most utilities.

Tar acts only as a simple glue, has a very low melting temperature, and remains defective in providing binding strength.

The use of an organic binder composition for coal dust which when mixed in the coal dust in a small quantity, and compacted, forms a useful fuel, has been a long time goal of inventors but not ever successfully achieved.

In general organic binder compositions have been found to have numerous drawbacks: e.g. they do not provide the binding force of useful inorganic binders, they do not impart drying to the coal dust which is often quite moist and very often fail to provide the necessary binding or green strength.

Many inorganic binders, such as tar, have very low melting temperatures and on hot days decompose the synthetic fuel and can make it useless.

Many of these binders were selected even though they often, unlike organics, produced no (and often diminished) BTU benefit when the fuel was burned but also significantly increased the amount of ash waste that itself had to be stored or otherwise handled.