New effort to increase coal production announced

Blacksburg, Va.--In three months, Virginia Tech researchers in the mining and minerals engineering department have received two U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awards to enhance mineral and coal production techniques, create higher value products, lower energy costs, and improve environmental sustainability of the mining industry.

These initiatives come as the country faces its worse energy crisis since the 1970s.

The DOE has just announced a $3 million award to Virginia Tech and to West Virginia University to establish a Center for Advanced Separation Technologies (CAST).

This award follows on the heels of another DOE award to Virginia Tech to demonstrate the commercial potential of new coal production techniques developed by university researchers.

Virginia Tech�s partnership with West Virginia University to create CAST is based on both universities sustaining long histories of strong research and teaching programs in mining and minerals engineering.

CAST researchers, concerned about the United States' reliance on imported energy sources, believe they can help the mining industry increase the production of coal and improve the efficiency of producing minerals in an environmentally acceptable manner by developing advanced separation technologies.

These technologies can be used to separate ash and sulfur dioxide-forming minerals from coal. They can also be used to remove impurities from mineral concentrates.

Various separation processes are currently used in the mining industry, but they need improvement, particularly for processing fine particles. For example, the industry currently discards more than 40 percent of coal fines, 30 percent of Florida�s phosphate, 20 percent of the world�s tungsten, and 10 percent of Minnesota�s iron oxide.

Roe-Hoan Yoon, Virginia Tech professor of mining and minerals engineering and director of CAST, says it "is important to reduce the costs of producing fuels in the U.S." In 1999, the U.S. imported $67.7 billion of oil, accounting for 25 percent of the total trade deficit. And this number jumped to approximately $109 billion for the year 2000.

Conversely, the trend for the U.S. exportation of coal has declined. The United States sold 102 million tons of coal valued at $4.2 billion in 1992 to overseas markets. By 1999 the export level fell to a record low of 57 million tons, valued at only $2.1 billion. Yoon attributes this loss in market share to Australian coal producers, who have "improved their productivity through technology development. And other competitors from the European Union countries are heavily subsidized by their governments, thus limiting opportunities for U.S. coal in Western Europe."

Yoon firmly believes the United States can rely on more of its own assets. U.S. coal accounted for the generation of some 51 percent of the electricity usage in the United States in 1999, and the retail price of this coal was estimated to be $111 billion, according to the U.S. Coal Supply and Demand 1999 Review. With improved separation technologies, coal usage would increase, he says.

In general, Yoon explains, separation technologies account for 40 to 70 percent of the capital and operating costs of the many industries. "Therefore, improving separation efficiencies and reducing critical technology barriers should result in energy savings, minimize pollution, create new markets and increase the rate of returns on investment," Yoon says.

"The advanced separation technologies to be developed at CAST can be used to recover the coal that currently sits in refuse ponds due to the high processing cost. At the same time, these refuse ponds will be cleaned-up, minimizing the environmental impact of mining," Yoon says. He hopes to also see these technologies exported to China and India where much of the mined coal is burned without cleaning. "This would help increase the combustion efficiency and thereby reduce the global sulfur dioxide emissions."

Yoon and his colleagues have already made strides in this research arena in the past 20 years leading to the DOE�s decision to fund CAST. The best known is the Microcel™ technology, used widely in both the coal and mineral industries to improve recovery rates. The technology is currently marketed by SVEDALA, the world�s largest mining equipment supplier.

Other technologies developed at Virginia Tech include a flotation reagent for the processing of kaolin clay, an optical sensor for coal analysis, and a hydrosizer for the recovery of coarse phosphate and coal. Most recently, Yoon and the members of his research center developed novel technologies, now close to commercialization, that separate water from the surface fine particles that are close to commercialization.

Yoon has served as the director of the Center for Coal and Mineral Processing at Virginia Tech since 1988. CAST will now replace that center.

Congressman Rick Boucher, representing southwest Virginia, was instrumental in securing both of these awards, as well as Alexandria Congressman James Moran and Senator John Warner.

"I am extremely pleased that the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded federal funding to CAST. Virginia Tech and West Virginia University have accumulated a great deal of expertise in the areas of separation science and technology, particularly as applied to energy and environmental research. The joint effort between the two institutions is a valuable partnership which will advance the effort to develop commercially viable processes to increase coal energy efficiency through the recovery of previously unrecoverable fine coal particles," Boucher stated.

PR CONTACT: Lynn Nystrom,540-231-4371, [email protected]