Comparison of Performance of Different Oils in Coal Flotation

Oils such as diesel oil, kerosene and fuel oil are used as collectors in coal flotation in order to increase the hydrophobicity of the coal particles. In the current study, the effect of four different type of oils (diesel oil, fuel oil, original sunflower oil, waste sunflower oil) were investigated on flotation performance of a coal in powder form (-0.25 mm) with high ash (35.65%) and sulphur (7.91%) content. Maximum combustible recovery with 87.48% was achieved using diesel oil as the collector. Maximum ash rejection by 58.36% was obtained using fuel oil. It has been determined that it can be used as an alternative to petroleum based oils and can be used as a renewable vegetable based oil in the enrichment of coal with flotation. Furthermore, it was concluded that the performance of waste sunflower oil (combustible recovery of 84.19%, ash rejection of 56.17%) is close to the performance of other oils