Significance of coal quality on thermoplastic properties: a case study

Abstract

The amount of coking coal in all over the world is scarce while it is an essential commodity for steel making; in an economical way, no alternative of coking coal is found out till now. Though, so many researches have already been there to understand its properties specifically its plasticity behavior, it requires a deeper understanding concerning the coal plasticity. Hence, to compare and correlate, five coking coals were chosen from different countries which are used for metallurgical purposes throughout the world. Basic characterization, i.e. proximate and ultimate analyses and petrography were done with the measurement of plasticity, dilation, and swelling properties of the studied samples. Detailed petrographic studies reveal the interrelationship between the different kinds of macerals and the fluidity of coking coals. The vitrinite group of macerals has a positive relationship while the inertinite and the liptinite group of macerals have both positive and negative correlation with the plasticity of a particular coal. Hence, this study focuses to build a profound understanding about the role of all the macerals and other characteristics of coal, i.e. volatile matter, rank, etc., in coal plasticity.