CAPE TOWN (miningweekly.com) – Engineering company CoalTech has successfully established a 10 000 t/m coal pelletising and curing plant, in eMalahleni, Mpumalanga.

Having initially launched its pelletising technology at the 2016 Investing in African Mining Indaba, the company announced to delegates at this year’s Mining Indaba that it had, since, supplemented its pelletising technology with a process to dry and cure the pellets that had been produced.

“Our pellets have been thoroughly tested over the past four years and verified to meet industry requirements by Bureau Veritas,” said CoalTech president Filippo Fantechi.

He noted that the final patent application for the technology had been lodged in South Africa, while patent applications were also being lodged in “various other countries” where CoalTech had plans to market its technology.

He commented that CoalTech was ready to start construction of scaled-up plants with higher production capacity to meet customers’ requirements. “Mining and coal processing companies in South Africa have already expressed their interest in building plants which would process over 450 000 t/m of coal pellets,” Fantechi revealed.

He added that the company had received expressions of interest from potential customers in Europe, North America and Asia.

Fantechi was of the firm view that the company’s “breakthrough technology” would propel economic growth, provide a new source of energy to generate electricity and create local jobs.

In addition, Fantechi remarked that the technology would have a positive impact on the environment through the conversion of waste material into energy on a cost-effective basis.

He said the company had dealt with one of the most significant challenges that had faced many other companies that had tried to develop this type of technology previously, namely that of providing an effective and economical solution to drying the upstream and downstream product.

Fantechi explained that this was necessary to take CoalTech’s technology to the “next level”, which was to enhance production from the proven smaller quantities to an industrial scale where large quantities of pellets could be produced and handled without losing their shape or bonding together.

“Not only has CoalTech proven what we promised, namely that coal fines can be effectively and economically agglomerated into coal pellets with all the properties necessary for transportation storage and energy production, but we have also solved the issue of producing and drying large quantities of pellets while maintaining their final form at the end of the production run,” he enthused.

Further, Fantechi remarked that the company had also done this in a way that was efficient and economical by using existing coal fines waste material in the curing and drying process. “We are now ready to build industrial plants in South Africa and further afield,” he affirmed.

Fantechi also noted that, globally, the higher cost of coal extraction, enhanced environmental concerns regarding the release of carbon emissions and diminishing vacant land for mine waste deposits, had led to a major challenge for the mining industry.

“An estimated 30-billion tons [of coal fines] produced worldwide can be reused with the environment-friendly CoalTech technology, thereby enhancing the productivity of mines by up to 20% and securing higher returns on investment for mining companies,” he concluded.