Cleaner Production Options at a Coal Preparation Facility in Vietnam

Abstract

This paper highlights the current status of the largest coal preparation plant in Vietnam and suggests Cleaner Production (CP) options to address some problems of the plant. In the year 2005, about 30% of run-of-mine (ROM) coal was washed in coal preparation plants, the remaining treated in coal mining companies. The plant considered in this study had a production capacity of 6.1 million tons of ROM coal in 2005. Results of the preliminary assessment showed that the plant was facing several problems such as high amount of fine coal in ROM coal, high amount of magnetite loss, low efficiency operation of the cyclone classifier system, high ash content in the fine coal product, and high amount of coal slurry. CP options along with a simple economic analysis have been suggested to address all these issues.