White Coal Technology Demonstration Plant
In order to assess the behavior of a new customer’s coal in the White Coal Technology process and so that potential end users of the White Coal Technology product may assess it in their furnaces, the customer will sometimes require large tonnages of product made from their own coal so that they can have it assessed, before committing to have a commercial plant built. The size of these samples can be 10,000 tonne or more and construction of a demonstration plant the only means by which such samples can be made.
Hence, White Energy has committed to establishing a pre-commercial demonstration plant in Cessnock, NSW in Australia that will allow proof of an effective scale-up of the proprietary binderless coal briquetting process i.e. testing and stockpiling of a wider range of low quality coals from different regions.
The facility will allow prospective users of the White Coal Technology to:
- determine operational and maintenance costs and requirements for their particular coal;
- enable production of large tonnage test samples for assessment of its large scale handling, transport and storage, and combustion behavior in commercial applications; and,
- gain comfort that the White Coal Technology will be able to be applied successfully to their coal before committing substantial resources to purchasing a commercial plant.
The end product will be a demonstration plant that will be able to provide the engineering proof of the effectiveness of the White Coal Technology process.
This will include:
- showing that the process successfully produces improved energy efficient briquettes that can be stockpiled without spontaneous combustion;
- demonstrating that the agglomerating machines can operate at the rate that all commercial predictions have been based;
- demonstrating that the agglomerating machines can have an acceptable operating life between maintenance shutdowns;
- demonstrating that the unique dryer design can be reliably scaled up from the pilot and development plants; and,
- providing data to enable keeping technical and commercial risks to an acceptable level in the first commercial scale White Coal Technology plant.
