Help Needed: Producing Durable Coal Briquettes Under Rain

[Waterproof]

Hi all, I hope to get some help from you here.
I'm a quality engineer working for a coal briquettes company in Turkey. What we do is collecting the coaldust from all over Turkey and make them briquettes by pressing under high pressure (70-80 bars).
We add some extra binder materials to the coaldust to get extra mechanical strength (%2 CMC-Cellulose by weight) and some water to make the coaldust compressible.
But our briquettes are not durable under rain. I mean our coal briquettes turn into dust in a few minutes under rain, that's just because of our binder. Cellulose is soluble in water.
But we need to produce highly durable briquettes under rain because we sell these products to industry and the briquettes are being stored at the outside of the factories.
That means we need a non-toxic, cheap and waterproof binder or adhesive to use with the coaldust.
Last week I tried to use Technical Gelatin. We all know Gelatin is made from protein. Maybe we can find a way to make Gelatin waterproof. Or an other way to produce waterproof briquettes. Anyone to help me?

 

[turbo]

Do you have a process problem, or do your customers have a storage-integrity problem? If your customers stored the product in a dry place sheltered from the rain (simple outdoor bins with a roof to shed rain-water) they would not only avoid degradation of your briquettes, they would also avoid introducing water into the fuel stream. That water is very costly in terms of the heat that is required to vaporize it.

 

[Waterproof]

We sell nearly 4000 tons of coal briquettes monthly to each factory and they store them outside. This is a very large amount, a factory may not find a place to store this coal hill in a dry place at inside.

 

[Studiot]

I would say that the cost of a rain shelter, though more expensive than one batch of briquettes, would eventually be cheaper as the shelter cost is incurred once, whereas any additive is an ongoing cost forever more.

 

[turbo]

I would say that the cost of a rain shelter, though more expensive than one batch of briquettes, would eventually be cheaper as the shelter cost is incurred once, whereas any additive is an ongoing cost forever more.

And the cost of introducing unwanted water into the fuel stream is an unnecessary, and ongoing expense. In the northeast US, we generally have to use salt and/or salted sand to treat our roads in the winter. Obviously, we don't want rain to dissolve the salt, or to have the salt entering our ground-water, so we build very large salt-sheds. They are not expensive and they save money (and environmental damage) year after year.

This is the salt shed for a fairly large town/city. Most local ones are smaller, but still can hold a lot of material.

http://www.gardinermaine.com/Public_Documents/GardinerME_PublicWorks/saltshedpics

 

[nathanlee52]

You could produce the briquettes as normal, then batch bathe them in a water repellant. Liquid or spray based repellants might release toxic fumes when burned, you're on your own about that.

Protectosil or something.

I'd suspect this way you can keep current process and then add the repellant one, create two lines of product, two price tiers..

it's going to affect combustability in some way.

i repeat the warning to be careful about fumes and or toxic wastes in the ashes or something.



I'd be highly skeptical of any waterPROOF claims I'd see on a charcoal briquette lol, I would suggest advertising it as waterRESISTANT from here on out.

 

[IMH]

Hello waterproof - I've successfully demonstrated the formation of a cheap waterproof (or water resistant - depending on customer demand and cost structure) coal fines briquette, pellet, and ball. The first question is what is the customer demand - 100% waterproof or is minimal moisture take up accepatable (say 15%). If the customer is useing coal as a heat source, I suspect a total of 18% total moisture is acceptable. So, my next question would be - what is the coal dust moisture content? I always work back from the customer requirements. Also, if you are added a large value to the raw materials and increasing the value of the finished product, cost is not the first consideration - market price and availability of superiour products would be! If you want more information please email me at iharris@comcast.net .