Research Information System
gospodarka surowcami mineralnymi – mineral resources management, vol.38, no.3, pp.137-150, 2022 (SCI-Expanded)
In this study, a three-level Box-Behnken design of experiments combined with response surface
methodology used to investigate the effects of the feed density, feed pressure and vortex finder diameter on the separation results (ash content and yield of the overflow) of a water-only cyclone. The coal
used in the study was supplied from Soma, Turkey and crushed to below 1 mm. Experiments were
conducted using a watter-only cyclone (WOC) which was operated in a closed-circuit test rig, overflow and underflow streams were collected and were sieved through 0.1 mm to simulate dewatering
screens.The actual data collected from the tests were used to construct the empirical models representing clean coal ash and yield as process responses to the independent variables. The significance
test of model fit for clean coal ash and yield were performed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The
results showed that ash content and yield of the clean coal models were significant.The results showed
that with an increase in vortex finder diameter (VFD), feed density (FD) and inlet pressure (IP), ash
content and yield of the clean coal increases. The results suggested that all main parameters affected
the ash content and yield of the clean coal to some degree. The significance order of the effect of the
variables on the ash content and yield was found as FD > VFD > IP and VFD > IP > FD respectively.
The results of the numerical optimization in the range of the experimental data showed that it is possible to reduce the ash content of clean coal from 42.21 to 18.89.