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Article history: The experimental determination of higher heating value (HHV) of solid fuels is a cost intensive process, as
Received 22 June 2007 it requires special instrumentation and highly trained analyst to operate it, where as proximate analysis
Received in revised form 14 March 2008 data can be obtained relatively easily using an ordinary mufe furnace. Therefore, to simplify the task and
Accepted 16 April 2008
to reduce the cost of analysis many correlations were developed for determining HHV from proximate
Available online 12 May 2008
analysis of solid fuels. An attempt has been made in this paper to evaluate the applicability of these cor-
relations with a special focus on Indian coals. It has been observed that the developed correlations are
Keywords:
either complex in nature or by-pass the effect of important variables like moisture and ash contents of
Higher heating value (HHV)
Proximate analysis
coals. An effort has, therefore, been made to develop a simple correlation based on proximate analysis
Coal data for predicting HHV of coal (as-received basis). The model presented here is developed using analyses
Model of 250 coal samples and its signicance lies in involvement of all the major variables affecting the HHV.
The developed model appears to be better than the existing models and has the following form:
HHV 0:03A 0:11M 0:33V M 0:35F C :
0016-2361/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2008.04.008
3078 A.K. Majumder et al. / Fuel 87 (2008) 30773081
Goutal [3] proposed a correlation (1) taking volatile matter and Recently, some nonlinear models for the estimation of HHV of
xed carbon (on dry ash free basis) as important constituents Indian coals were proposed by Patel et al. [1] based on articial
neural networks (ANN) methodology. The complexity of these
C G 82F C aV M 1
models limits their applicability.
Here FC and VM denotes xed carbon and volatile matter respec- In view of the above it is imperative that there is an urgent need
tively and a is a constant that depends on volatile matter and to develop a simple but reliable model to predict the HHV of coals
has different values at different volatile matter content. CG is the of various sources from the proximate analysis data involving all
caloric value in Kcal/kg. The xed carbon of different coals is as- the major variables. To minimize the efforts and time involved in
sumed to be of xed composition and hence of xed caloric value. pre-processing it is also desirable to develop this model based on
The composition and caloric value of volatile matter differ from data as-received basis.
coal to coal and are assumed to depend on the nature of coal. These
assumptions limit the utility of this correlation. 3. Experimental
Schuster [4] proposed a correlation (2) based on volatile matter
only (on dry ash free basis). The limiting factor of this equation is Coal samples were collected from coalelds of central India,
that it requires samples to be in ash free form, which needs pre- which are well-known as South Eastern Coalelds Limited (SECL).
processing of coal. Secondly it is based on volatile matter (VM) only, The coal deposits of SECL occur in ve districts of Chhattisgarh
which alone is not able to govern the exact HHV of coal named as Bilaspur, Korba, Raigarh, Surguja and Korea and in three
districts of Madhya Pradesh named as Shahdol, Umaria and Anup-
HHV 4:183 103 8000 V M 70 1:65 V M 2 pur. Coal samples collected from these regions were ground to
212 lm size and representative samples were then taken by con-
Kucukbayrak et al. [5] have given a unied correlation (3) for esti-
ventional coning and quartering method for analysis. Moisture,
mating caloric values of lignites. It was based on volatile matter
volatile matter, ash and xed carbon contents of these samples
and ash (in wt.% on dry basis) and HHV is determined in MJ/kg. In
were determined by thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA) using
this equation HHV was assumed to be a polynomial function of vol-
ASTM-D5142 proximate analyzer (Model TGA-601). HHV of these
atile matter (VM) and inorganic constituents or ash (A) of coal
samples were determined by Bomb calorimeter (Model AC-350)
HHV 76:56 1:3V M A 7:03 103 V M A2 3 following the ASTM procedure. The HHV determination of coal is
not an easy task as it has both mineral and macerals. Errors may
A simple Eq. (4) based on proximate analysis is presented by Cor- arise due to difculty in producing a representative sample for
dero et al. [6], which allows calculation of HHV of lignocellulosics such a heterogeneous material, lack of reproducibility between
and charcoals. Here HHV is expressed in KJ/kg (dry basis), VM and samples and between analysts and incomplete combustion of sam-
FC are in weight percent on dry basis. This equation shows the ple. Thus keeping all these factors in mind analysis was performed
dependence of caloric value on xed carbon and volatile matter. with great attention. Around 250 samples were analyzed to cover
This equation has been derived from multiple linear regression the entire range of moisture, ash and volatile matter contents of
analysis using least square-tting programme. It may be observed thermal coals normally used.
from Eq. (4) that the weightage on xed carbon is more than double
the weightage of volatile matter on the HHV which probably limits 4. Development of correlation
the application of this equation only for coal of high xed carbon
content It is well-known that ash, volatile matter, moisture and xed
HHV 354:3F C 170:8V M 4 carbon combinely decide the nature of coal and more precisely
its HHV as a fuel. Therefore, the results obtained were carefully
For the determination of HHV of biomass fuels Demirbas [7] has gi- examined for observing the impacts of ash, moisture, volatile mat-
ven a correlation (5) by means of regression analysis. This correla- ter and xed carbon on the HHV of coal. It was observed that ash
tion consists of only one independent variable i.e. xed carbon (in and moisture have negative effects on HHV. To show the impacts
wt.% on as-received basis) and HHV is in MJ/kg. Similar comments of ash and moisture contents of coals on HHV, the HHV values
as given in Eq. (1) may, therefore, be given to this correlation too are plotted as a function of the added value of both the variables
HHV 0:196F C 14:119 5
In 1991 Jimenez and Gonzalez [8] proposed a new correlation (6) 35
(taking lignocellulosic wastes) based on xed carbon and volatile
matter. Here HHV is in KJ/kg (dry basis), VM and FC are in wt.% on 30
dry basis. This equation may not be applicable for Indian high ash
coals as it does not incorporate the effect of this important variable 25
HHV(MJ/kg)
35 (Fig. 1). It was further observed that xed carbon and volatile mat-
ter contents both have positive effects on the HHV of coals and the
30 impacts are shown in Fig. 2 in the similar fashion as in Fig. 1.
Out of 250 data 164 data covering a wide range of moisture, ash
25 and volatile matter were selected to generate the correlation and
HHV(MJ/kg)
and the predicted data is calculated to be 13.13%, which is slightly ables affecting the HHV of coals. Validation with a set of published
in the higher side. This has happened due to the high errors in- data at reasonable accuracy establishes the general acceptability of
volved while predicting HHV of a few coal samples. For example, the developed correlation.
from the data presented in Table 2 it may be observed that the
proximate analysis of sample numbers 25, 33 and 71 are almost References
similar but the HHV of sample number 71 is almost half the value
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Estimation of gross caloric value of coals using articial neural networks. Fuel
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