The first Indaba was held in 1995 and now in its 18th year the Coal Science and Technology Indaba continues to produce papers illustrating the cutting edge research undertaken by South African researchers at universities and industry. These researchers and developers working in the fields of coal beneficiation, coal conversion clean coal technology, water treatment and new carbon based products are involved in a crucial, dynamic, and challenging field of research. The World Coal Institute and International Energy Agency (IEA) predictions indicate that global growth for primary energy supply will continue to increase in spite of alternative energy contributions.

This year’s conference will be dedicated to the presentation of research done at South African universities and organisations involved in research. The sharing of such knowledge helps stimulate and develop an active research community in coal science and technology in South Africa.  The resulting contributions will contribute significantly to post graduate education programmes and industrial research laboratories as well as to the industrial development in South Africa.

The conference programme will consist of three plenary lectures from Sasol, Eskom, and CSIR followed by two parallel sessions involving forty five presentations from seven different universities and five industrial/national research institutions. These presentations accurately reflect the coal-based research undertaken at South African universities.

Extensive research was undertaken on coal extraction and beneficiation using dry methods which exclude water from the coal cleaning process. Many beneficiation methods for large coal particles already exist, but dry fine coal methods at the moment lack research and publications.

Since coal deposits (especially deep seated) have unique properties their potential for CO² storage is receiving attention in greater detail at laboratory scale as they have not been included in reports on geological storage of CO² in South Africa. However recent findings on the successful trapping of significant amounts of CO² have now prompted further research on South African coal for CO² capture and storage.

South Africa faces the problem of ageing coal fired power plants - the oldest approaching 50 years of age. Ageing power stations often require retrofitting with newer technologies to help increase efficiency and lower the environmental risks. Research involving de-NOx and de-SOx processing will be reported involving advanced modelling in order to assess the performance for optimization purposes.

South Africa is also faced with constantly decreasing coal quality. The challenge of all coal based industries is the development of technologies to improve the efficiency of the coal conversion process together with the disposal of coal ash. For this purpose a number of papers dedicated to chemical and physical characterisation will be presented with application to combustion and gasification. The possibility of substituting a fraction of imported coals with coke oven tar to lower coal blends while conserving the base of raw material will also be discussed.

This conference will attract a diverse audience from universities, governmental organisations and industry and will offer new thinking on the many challenges facing coal mining and processing in the 21st century.