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The demand for electric energy increases every year. However, due to recent changes in the U.S. energy supplies, a growing gas shortage forced suppliers to curtail deliveries of natural gas for power generation. Many utilities anticipating supply problems switched to burning more costly light distillate oil. Unfortunately the Arab boycott of 1973 and the following price increases for oil forced again utilities to seek a cheaper source of fuel, namely coal, as a substitute for oil. Even though the U.S. has abundant supply in coal, the use of coal in power generation was limited in the past because of a higher capital cost associated with installing air pollution control devices. Therefore, current utilities primary concerns are "does the lower fuel price of the coal power plant really outweigh its disadvantage of higher construction costs as compared to the oil-burning power plant?". Thus, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the economic preference of the coal burning power plant compared to the oil-burning power plant in suppling base load power. An extensive analytical model accounting for the effects of escalating fuel prices was examined and a computer simulation model was developed to handle risk associated with various input parameters using the SLAM as a simulation language.

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An investigation of the literature showed that as the diameter of a hydrocyclone was decreased, smaller particles could be effectively separated on the basis of specific gravity. Consequently, a laboratory scale study was conducted to determine the possibility of removing pyritic sulfur from fine coal using a 1.0" diameter hydrocyclone. A 1.0" diameter hydrocyclone was constructed from stainless steel. The hydrocyclone was fabricated with easily interchangable parts that permitted rapid variations in the inlet diameter, apex discharge diameter, vortex finder diameter, vortex finder position, and cone angle. The feed pressure to the hydrocyclone could also be varied. A recirculating system was used. Synthetic material was used in place of actual coal during this investigation. The synthetic material, made from casting resin and barium sulfate, duplicated the coal with respect to particle size, shape, and specific gravity distribution. The synthetic coal had the advantage of not degrading during the course of the experiment. Three coals were simulated for the purposes of this experiment. Pocahontas 113 coal served as the "light" coal, the Hagy seam was selected as the "medium" coal, and coal from the Cortes area of New Mexico was chosen as the "heavy" coal. By optimizing the 1.0" diameter hydrocyc1one for these three coals, it would be possible to extend the results of the investigation to any coal. The results of the investigation showed that the 1.0" diameter hydrocyclone was an effective device for removing pyritic sulfur from 65 x 200 mesh coal. The results for the minus 200 mesh size fraction were not good. A smaller diameter hydrocyclone would be necessary in order to effectively process the minus 200 mesh size fraction. / Ph. D.

In this investigation, approximately 500 pounds of germaniferous coal was sampled and split into size and specific gravity fractions. The specific gravity fractions were analyzed for ash, volatile matter, fixed carbon, and germanium. Richer fractions of the coal were further treated by solvent extraction, and on the basis of these tests, extraction tests of varying times were conducted. In addition, a sample of the coal was tested by froth flotation and the effects of flotation on germanium concentration were noted. Size and specific gravity separations have given products that contain two to three times as much germanium as the feed. Solvent extraction with suitable solvents was able to give products that contained as high as 250 times the germanium content of the feed. Froth flotation produced concentrations of the germanium that were only one and a half times greater than obtained in feed. The greatest concentration made by burning the coal was 50 to 1 when comparing the germanium in the ash to the germanium in the sample. / Master of Science