Evaporative Drying of Low-Rank Coal

Low-rank coals including the brown and the subbituminous coals are commonly known to contain high moisture content (up to 65%, wet basis), which limits their utilization around the world in spite of their low cost. Today, the most of the drying technologies are based on the evaporation of the water from the moist product. In this chapter, the most effective parameters on the evaporative coal-drying process are investigated with the data in the recent literature. The effective parameters are evaluated in three categories as follows: (1) the parameters about the drying media (the type of the media, the temperature, the pressure, the velocity and the relative humidity), (2) the coal parameters (the type of the coal and the size) and (3) the drying method