Speed up the development and popularization of coal in Shanxi and Taiyuan areas

Clean coal utilization is a key step of sustainable development in China. In the period of ninth Five-Year-Plan, China will greatly enhance the development and adoption of clean coal technology, in which the industrial coal briquetting plays an important role. Compared with burning pulverized coal, burning coal briquettes in stoker boilers raises heat efficiency 10--14%, saves 15--21% of the coal, reduces particulate emission by 80--91% and SO{sub 2} by 20--36%. Consequently, development and popularization of coal briquette for boilers have been listed as one of the key projects in the ninth Five-Year-Plan. Owing to mechanized coal mining, the lump coal proportion is being reduced. On the other hand, thousands of gas producers in the small and medium scale ammonia plants increasingly demand lump anthracite. This discrepancy between supply and demand on lump coal can be resolved by coal briquetting. This paper describes the features and superiority of coal briquettes for gasification; it has uniform size, larger porosity, and higher reactivity. Some of its properties can be upgraded. Many Chinese organizations are being devoted to coal briquetting research, development and production. How to coordinate them in their efforts to form a coal briquetting industry with suitable production capacity and active marketmore » is a topic worth studying. This paper describes the current situation on briquette research, production and marketing. Some proposals to speed up the development and popularization of the coal briquettes are given.« less