Which Beneficiation Process is Right for Your Plant?

Michael E. Coates
hands-on@ma.ultranet.com
508-351-6023
HANDS-ON! Flyash
9 Mayflower Road
Northborough, MA 01532

and

Rui F. Afonso
rui.ees@banet.net
508-756-5522
Energy and Environmental Strategies
50 Old Faith Road
Shrewsbury, MA 01545

SUMMARY

Enough is known about beneficiation technologies to understand how these processes work, how flyash
responds to efforts to beneficiate it, and what general results should be expected. This paper attempts
to assist flyash producers in grasping the variety of beneficiation processes. A generic description of
the various beneficiation concepts and expected results from various technologies is presented.

A few flyash beneficiation technologies have been brought to commercial application. These have
enjoyed success for good reasons: their developers have pursued the technologies through diligent
investigation and development, they have had the keen interest, support, and commitment of a
demonstration host, and they have had funding adequate to weather the lab, pilot, and demonstration
phases. These commercial processing technologies are very suitable in many circumstances.

Some applications may require some creativity to find a cost-effective solution. Though a number of
these processes await an enthusiastic host and development funding, it is probably safe to say that none
of these will prove to be the flyash beneficiation panacea. But, one of these emerging technologies, or
perhaps a combination of them, might provide a cost effective solution for your situation.

Armed with this knowledge and a good understanding of the flyash market forces, a flyash producer
should be able to sort through the broad number of possible processes and identify those most likely to
be effective for their flyash situation. Once several likely processes have been identified, some
straightforward characterization tests can be chosen to narrow the field of technologies to those most

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promising. Selection, analysis, and interpretation of characterization tests are, of course, a critical part
of finding the best flyash beneficiation solution.

Flyash Beneficiation Methods

Flyash is mostly mineral matter. Since mineral matter is desirable for flyash utilization, carbon is often
considered a contaminant. In some uses, carbon is simply an unwanted “impurity” but in many cases it
influences the quality of the final product. The most common "faults" of carbon include:

< Adding unwanted color (black)

Since the most plentiful use of flyash is in concrete products, and carbon can cause an increase in water
and air entraining agent (AEA) use in concrete, the focus of most beneficiation methods has been to
minimize the negative effects that carbon can have in normal-strength concrete.

The following contains a description of the attributes of the various beneficiation approaches. These
attributes and shortcomings should be kept in mind while evaluating which beneficiation method appears
to be best suited to improve a given flyash.

Passivation vs Removal

In the last two years studies by academic researchers have revealed several important characteristics of
carbon normally found in coal flyash. Their findings suggest strongly that carbon in flyash can be made
passive to air entraining agents. The best approach to passivation depends somewhat on surface area
and porosity characteristics of the carbon, which would be specific to each generating unit and coal. In
general, carbon in flyash is made passive by introducing a chemical (either liquid or gas) to the flyash,
which is adsorbed onto those carbon sites otherwise competing for the AEA. By occupying these
adsorption sites before exposure to an AEA, it minimizes AEA consumption.

While passivation may work well in reducing AEA consumption, it does not control the carbon content
of flyash to levels specified by ASTM.

A different approach to beneficiating flyash is to remove carbon from the mineral in flyash. This
approach assumes that if enough carbon is removed, the bulk of the remaining flyash will have little
carbon and therefore its negative influence will be minimized.

Carbon removal does not directly address the adsorptive characteristics of the carbon. Some flyash
carbons have proven to be extremely adsorptive even at LOI levels which meet ASTM specifications.
Some carbon removal techniques may alter chemical or physical characteristics of the mineral matter

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while removing carbon.

Combustion vs Separation

Combustion methods remove carbon without removing the mineral constituents. If the goal of flyash
beneficiation is to produce high quality mineral matter, combustion methods accomplish this in a way
that eventually places all mineral matter into the final product. These methods sometimes reduce the
adsorptive characteristics of any remaining carbon, either by encapsulating it within mineral or by
consuming the most reactive carbon. With combustion methods, it is possible to have net energy
released from the beneficiation process. Conceivably, this energy gain could be harnessed to improve
the overall efficiency of the process.

All separation methods produce more than one stream of products. This means that a use for more
than one flyash product needs to be found. If a high-value use for carbon is available, these methods
could make a carbon-enriched product stream. Generally none of these streams of products is pure;
most contain some carryover of undesirable constituents. Processes with one feed stream and multiple
output streams can often be difficult to control by simple methods. In order to attain high purity and
consistent product streams, multiple separation process steps are often necessary.

Wet vs Dry

Wet separation methods can be very effective; they can make reasonably sharp separations of certain
flyash constituents. They can readily produce multiple products, such as cenospheres, iron oxides,
carbon, and pozzolans, to reasonably high degrees of purity. Usually final products are required to be
dry so these methods require a large energy expenditure to filter and dry the various products after
separation. These methods usually require consumption of additional chemicals to assist wet
separation. With some flyashes, wet methods may affect the chemical characteristics of the mineral
matter, especially pozzolanic activity. Wet separation methods often require a new, and sometimes
large, facility footprint.

Dry methods appear to produce less sharp separation and may not be as suitable for separating
multiple products from flyash. These methods all use some energy to accomplish their separation,
though not as much as wet methods. They generally require a smaller footprint than wet processes.
They may also alter the physical or chemical makeup of the primary mineral product by preferentially
removing certain minerals or certain size particles.

Air Classification vs Vibratory vs Electrostatic vs Sieve

Air classification methods often utilize off the shelf equipment. Separation, whether by fluidization or
centrifugal action, is accomplished by attempting to manipulate the aerodynamic drag and density
characteristics of differing particles. Sharp separation of carbon appears to be difficult with these

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methods, especially if the flyash has a very large percentage of material with very small particle size.
With very small particles, aerodynamic drag appears to dominate the action of particles entrained in air,
so even particles with widely different densities behave similarly.

Flyash found in large quantities, such as hoppers, silos, and landfills often exhibits bulk characteristics
that contradict predictions based on particle shape and chemical composition. Researchers have
concluded that flyash, particularly very fine flyash, is strongly influenced by interparticle forces.

Vibratory methods assume that moisture bonding and van der Waals attractive forces exist between
very fine carbon and mineral particles and that these adhesive/attractive forces can be broken by
physical vibration. They attempt to cause carbon and mineral constituents to migrate in different
directions due to density, shape, or angle of repose. Because the carbon found in flyash is friable and
fragments easily, vibratory methods may reduce the average particle size of the carbon and may release
ultra-fine mineral particles previously encapsulated within the carbon. One concern with vibratory
methods is that of carbon collection. Vibratory methods often utilize shallow beds of flyash to reduce
carbon migration distance through mineral, but in doing so produce a thin layer of carbon on top of a
relatively thin layer of mineral. Collecting the carbon without capturing mineral is often difficult.

Electrostatic methods are based on the fact that small particles readily pick up surface electrical charges
due to interparticle and wall collisions. They also assume that carbon and most mineral matter charge
opposite in polarity. Lastly they assume that electrostatic forces are much stronger than other forces of
influence on the particles. When these triboelectrically charged particles are exposed to a high intensity
electrostatic field, carbon and mineral particles tend to be attracted to oppositely charged electrodes.
These methods attempt to capture and remove the particles, once attracted to an electrode. The
performance of these methods appears to be sensitive to varying flyash resistivity, which can change
significantly from coal to coal. Performance also appears to be quite sensitive to charge dissipation
influences, such as relative humidity and high carbon content. These methods appear to alter the size
distribution and chemical composition of the flyash, primarily by carrying very fine mineral and iron
oxides to the same electrode as the carbon.
Sieving separation of carbon from mineral is dependent on mineral matter having a different average
particle size than carbon. Sieving is most frequently assisted by some form of vibration of the screens.
Performance of the processes is often affected by vibration motion (for example circular vs lateral) and
vibration frequency. Laboratory testing to determine optimum screen configurations, vibratory motion,
and vibratory frequency is prudent prior to final equipment selection or installation. Vibration amplitude
and duration of exposure are important parameters, as well, to minimize carbon fracture during sieving.
With fine powders, it is important to include a stack of sieves upstream of the final sieve in order to
avoid blinding of the fine mesh by large particles. Large capacity, fine, industrial sieving processes are
not common.

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