Japan imports annually about 4 million tons of strong-caking coal for the purpose of manufacturing cokes for metallurgical use.To make cokes by the usual coke oven caking coal is naturally indispensable as its material, however, whether it is impossible to make cokes using non-caking coal as raw material, if any process other than that of coke oven were adopted, was the subject of our study since 1950.
The Coal Research Institute did finally invent a new coke making process from noncaking coal, which is called “Two-stages carbonization”, after years of close application to solve this problem.This process is mainly divided in three stages, such as, the devolatilization at the first stage, making of raw briquette from grain of semi-cokes at the second and thirdly coking of the briquette by high temperature carbonization process.90% of non-caking coal in quantity, as 10% of caking coal was mixed at the briquette forming stage as a binder, was used as raw material for coke making and cokes as final product with a hardness of 90% drum index at tumbler test were obtained.In industrializing this process the Institute has adopted the fluidized carbonization oven for devolatilization, briquetting machine with feeding equipment for forming briquette and continuous carbonization oven of vertical type for high temperature carbonization and the process was found as established after the long serial and continuous operation. In this article the detailed description concerning the plan of the pilot plant with semi-industrial scale by which the actual test operation mentioned above was performed, conditions of operation and the results of the quality test of coes have been made.
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