Coal Slurry Utilization Technique.

Coal slurry is a mixture of pulverized coal and some adequate liquid medium. The use of coal slurry has various advantages because of its fluidity. In particular, the technology for the preparation, transportation, storage and combustion of coal water mixture (CWM) has been developed, and the commercial production of CWM is now started. However, the production rate of CWM is very small at the present stage. The use of CWM depends strongly on the oil price and the economical conditions. Also, various problems in CWM utilization technology are still open to question. The treatment of solid-liquid mixture is one of the most difficult problem in the field of chemical engineering. Thus, it may be valuable to review the present status of CWM technology. In this paper, recent investigations on the following topics will be reviewed. (1) Optimization of coal particle size distribution for CWM, (2) dispersion additives, (3) stabilizing additives, (4) rheology of CWM, and (5) transportation and storage of CWM.