USE OF AN XRF COAL ANALYSER FOR BLENDING AND LOADING TRAINS

摘要

Griffin Coal mines a sub bituminous coal in the Collie region of Western Australia. This coal is low ash, but has a high moisture content and highly variable mineralogical composition primarily from interburden diluent material. A method of measuring coal ash accurately enough to meet stringent and diverse customer specifications was needed. In order to allow adjustments during me reclaim of consignment lots as small as 750 tonnes, this information was also required in as close as possible to real time. Natural gamma on-line analysers were tried and were not successful in this application. Dual energy devices were considered, but are strongly influenced by fluctuations in iron and calcium contents in run-of-nine coals. After heating about X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) analyser technology presented by Quality Control, Inc. (QCI) at the Eighth Australian Coal Preparation Conference, Griffin researched and ultimately decided to try a QCI analyser to monitor and blend run-of-mine coal for utility and industrial customers to within a target precision of +/- 0.5 percent ash. On-line analyser performance was evaluated using the new international standard ISO 15239 for the evaluation of the measurement performance of on-line analysers. The results of these tests and further development of the XRF technology is presented in this paper.