© C. Victor Hall & ecoTECH Waste Management Systems (1991) Inc (and predecessor). 1980/2012

ecoTECHWaste Management Systems (1991) Inc.

www.etwm.ca & www.ecophaser.caTel: 604 755 9363 Fax: 604 357 1357

Removal of PollutingComponentsBefore Firing

Clean Combustion:

Economics: It is a simple equation: good coal bought at market with 20% tramp & passenger materials removed = 95+% hydrocarbon feedstock; lower ranking coal bought cheaply with 50% tramp & passenger materials removed = 95+% hydrocarbon feedstock. The economic analysis must follow value-to-value, i.e. the purchase price of the two examples above should mean that the price paid for the lower ranking coal must be circa 62.5% of the price paid for the higher rated coal.

Method: Using the normal arrangement of gasifying lump or small crushed coal where all of the feedstock undergoes solid to gas phase conversion by indirect starved air (sub-stoichiometric) 2 stage gas conversion then combustion or direct over-fire combustion, will result in variances in the released gas stream, due to uncontrollable factors such as ambient temperature fluctuations and moisture content variances from climatic influences in storage or transit.

Accordingly, we must design a system that mitigates all of the aforementioned performance detractors.Where conversion to coal gas in some systems is necessary, using a small percentage of the available coal to provide the necessary heat for roasting the remainder in a separate controlled atmosphere vessel will provide results that are consistent in volumes and fractional gases released. In this system, we are allowed the flexibility to fuel the heater (an ecoTECH Phaser or spray injection burner) with a variety of waste materials, as available, thereby reducing costs and the sacrificial use of part of the feedstock for heat.

Proposed System: The planned circuit for converting lump coal to micronized clean coal takes into account the two functions of the system necessary for the generation process to run with uniform feedstock: 1] Removecontaminantsandpassenger inertcomponentspriortocombustion.

2] Provideenoughheattodrythefeedstock andslowmicrobialattackonthecoal.

The lump coal micronizing and cleaning systemClean-Burning Nano-emulsion Coal Fuel (CWM micronized fuel)

Overview

When looking at the stated requirements where coal is the prime ingredient and fuel for power generation, the variances of specifications for coal and the actual makeup of the received coal is of paramount importance. The local coal sourced and its type and rank, plus both the passenger inert materials and tramp contaminant content all are factors that affect the throughput volume, efficiency and gas quality/yield.

To remove the unwanted, (non-hydrocarbon) content of the

coal, prior to thermally processing it to

release its e n t r a i n e d gases, is a n e c e s s a r y action that

must be performed to get optimum, uncontaminated, reliable quality gas for the production of the liquid hydrocarbon product target.

© The reader is cautioned that the coal cleansing technology is proprietary to ecoTECH Waste Management Systems (1991) Inc. All rights reserved.

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The ecoTECH COAL BENEFICIATION SYSTEM explained:The following information explains how Clean-Burning Nano-emulsion Coal Fuel (CWM micronized) is made.

In theory, top quality anthracite, the type of coal with the most energy content, maximizes at about 18,000 BTU per pound. On the other end of the scale, lignite or "brown coal" has an average energy content of circa 6,000 to 7,000 BTU per pound, with Leonardite (a sort of half finished coal/biomass resulting from less heat and pressure during its formation) at between 5,000 and 6,000 BTU per pound. All these fuels and all types of coal contain volatile hydrocarbons in varying percentages. The higher the hydrocarbon content, the greater the heat index of the fuel, so you may have by now perceived that anthracite has the greatest percentage of hydrocarbons.

Anthracite is followed in its heat energy index by bituminous coal at 14,000 to 16,000 BTU per pound, sub-bituminous at between 10,000 and 12,000 BTU per pound, then Lignite, Leonardite and Peat.

Ipso facto, the balance of the material in the raw coal types is made up of non-combustibles, some of which are potent pollutants. This "passenger" or "tramp" material content of coal includes ash and grit, mud-clay, bentonite, combined and complex mineral salts, etc. In some cases it contains highly volatile undesirables such as sulphur, ("brimstone" from your Bible days) and sulphur combines with water to form acid rain in cloud formations (H2SO4), so despite its additive heat index characteristic, it must be removed prior to combustion. This is why coals used prior to the President Regan era produced more, if dirty, energy than they do now. That fact alone means that power stations have to consume more coal than they used to.

If you add in the amount of limestone (CACO3) which has to be added to the burning coal to neutralize the acid content from varying amounts of sulphur that may or may not be in a given coal (2 seams from the same mine may have some or no sulphur, so quality control is not possible) you get a very heavy "passenger" non-combustible limestone content. Most power stations err on the safe side when adding limestone, sometimes up to five times the required amount for neutralization stoichiometry!

We studied the sono-chemical reconstitution of lime at power stations for over a year and have a full system available for lime recycling for our Chinese clients that need to stick to their old coal-firing methods or are under order to do so by local authorities.

It is a system preferred by environmentalists and it removes the contingent liability of the dumping of quicklime at landfills, which is devastatingly deadly to wildlife. The ecoTECH Sono-chemical Lime Recovery System adds 17% to the bottom line profits.

So, when you look at the coal-burning power industry as it is today, the fuel mix gives a very unsatisfactory result. The hydrocarbon fuel content in the coal has to heat all the parasitic “passenger” content. Moisture is absorbed and adsorbed by the ash content of the coal and lime additive. So in a pound of coal, the net energy release after carrying all these tramp materials is reduced considerably.

Our goal is to remove all the non-combustibles and the sulphur from coal.If anthracite (rough figures) is 90% combustibles, then the heat index of true cleaned coal at 100% combustibles has a theoretical value of circa 20,000 BTU per pound.

Byscreening,reducingandfloatingthelowerrankcoals,thehydrocarbonsplusamuchreducedcomponentofimpurities,willbeourproduct.Wehaveanesotericachievabletargetof16,000BTUperpoundforourendproduct.

However,itmustbeborneinmindthattheroughertheinputcoal,themorewastewillberejected,sotheeconomicequationsrevolvearoundthepriceperunitofenergyinthecoal.Accordingly,gangue(rejectcoalresidue)withahydrocarboncontentof20%andapassenger impuritycontentof80%(themixedwasteintermed"slag")mustbepurchasedatfarlessthan40%ofgoodqualitycoalfortheeconomicstowork,allowingforthedisposaloftheunusedresiduefromthecleaningprocess.Insomecases,asmallcostoffsetmaybeachievablebyinstallingapost-processinggleaningsystemforhighvaluesalvagedcomponents,(suchaselementalsulphur)butthatwilldependonthecomponentmixoftherawcoal,whichwillvaryfromsourcetosource.Thosecostequationsneedtobefactoredonacasebycasebasis.Ifourclient/partnerisabletoobtainthegangueorotherroughcoalsfornothing(orclosetonothing)aspoorqualityrejectedmaterial,a

coalbeneficiationprojectisveryprofitable.

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To test the viability, the economic cost of the energy used to clean the coal, plus operating overheads, the oil used for flocculation, staff, equipment maintenance and disposal of residues has to be offset against the sale price of the finished product.

When all that is taken into account, the physics and chemistry of the system, when viewed as a schematic, are remarkably simple. We grind raw coal to a size small enough to mechanically separate the components, and add a small volume percentage of light oil to the mix. The combustible fractions of the ground mixture have an affinity with oil and the oil is adsorbed onto the surface of the ground coal particles, being trapped in the amorphous surface capillaries of the coal (similar to the microscopic cationic/mechanical entrapment of methane on coal surfaces in coal seam), thereby adding buoyancy to the combustibles and increasing the natural hydrophobic nature of the combustible granules, which begin to agglomerate.

The tramp materials are hydrophilic, combining with and absorbing water, increasing their density. When a flocculent is added to the water in the flotation tanks that the slurry passes through, the flocculent whets the water in the tank, disassociating the surface tension boundary layer of the water, thereby causing the reject materials to sink, whilst the oil-bound hydrocarbons float on to be paddle-scooped off the end tank of the series of tanks that act as the hydro-filtration unit. By varying the amount of flocculent additive in each tank, we are able to sink components of different densities, thereby, sorting the non-combustibles and sulphur into by-products and true wastes.

Please remember that the finished powdered, slurried product is susceptible to aerobic bacteriological attack, which oxidizes the hydrocarbons and fuels the bugs, not the furnace, so it has a very short storage life. A non-polluting bactericidal binder must be used if the product is to be stored or briquetted. This adds another layer of cost. Briquetting uses high energy and the binder is not cheap, as it must burn without toxin release.

The ecoTECH Coal Beneficiation System is as follows:

1] A flail/shear mill to reduce the material to a coarse mix,

2] A low frequency sonic grinder unit to grind the slurried mix to a fine granular consistency

3] The Sonic reactor acts as a shear mixer of oil and hydrocarbons

4] Combustibles flotation tanks in series for flocculating density separation of by-products and reject wastes, with sulphur recovery.

The Sonic Grinding component of the system is described in detail as follows:

Sono-chemistry is a recent (1970+) scientific field. It has many potential applications of which only a few have been presently identified and even fewer brought to a commercial applications stage.

The Sono-Chemical Reactor technology is used for Sono-chemistry,where it accelerates chemical reactions, or providing ultra-fine grinding down to a circa 680 nanometers (single pass 3 second residence time), or de-agglomerating, emulsifying, and shear-mixing on a commercial scale.

The Sono-chemical reactors (of which the Sonic-Grinder proposed is a member) are a family of unique oscillating machines capable of generating high power at low frequencies and, when the target process media (in this case, crushed coal) is immersed in a liquid or slurry, they create intense cavitation and high-energy pressure waves.

The more powerful units are of horizontal design with reaction chambers bolted to each end of the bar. The frequency and amplitude of bar vibration, in the horizontal units, results in very high inertial forces generated at the ends of the massive bar that is the only moving part of the device, and within the special flow-through reaction chambers that are mounted to the ends of the bar.

The fundamental principle of this proprietary technology is the rapid switching of current through symmetric electromagnets that circumscribe a position immediately outboard of each neutral nodal bending point of a massive high yield solid steel bar. These magnets create a powerful electromagnetic force that, in turn, vibrates the tips and centre of the bar at its natural frequency, typically in the range of 50 to 400 Hz, and at amplitudes limited only by the endurance stress limit of the steel and reaching 10 mm (0.375”) amplitudinal movement in a clover-leaf wave form with the 50Hz unit. The effect of a bar vibrating in such resonance is the same as can be demonstrated by striking a musical tuning fork.

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The mass movement effect has been measured in the chambers to exceed a force of 600G.

Media that is subject to treatment is fed as a water-based, or emulsion/oil based slurry into the sono-reaction chambers which are mounted on the ends of the bar, where they are subject to the maximum accelerations and directional changes produced by the vibrating bar. Intense acoustic energy and cavitational effects are produced in the slurries as they are pumped through these chambers.

In principle, the operation of the electromagnetic drive system is extremely simple. The drive units are energized at the desired natural mechanical resonant frequency of the massive steel bar by a variable frequency, three phase, AC inverter power supply. This causes a three-dimensional, nutational vibration of the resonant member which allows energy to propagate radially from the ends of the resonant bar in all directions.

Exciting the radiating bar at its natural resonant frequency results in a tremendously increased power transmission ability for a given excitation force; this is the key to the technology.

n operation, the Sono-chemical Reactor creates extreme vibration and cavitation, and causes chaotic movement with the solid particles in the slurry impacting on each other. The larger friable ingredients of the slurry are de-agglomerated by the cavitational rending. The combined effect of repeated percussion, then cavitation tears the bonds that bind the components mechanically.

Where chemical reactions are utilized in a process, the action of cavitation and shear-mixing micronizes the reaction ingredients, exposes heretofore inaccessible surfaces and

cavities, creates cellular disruption and thereby accelerates the reaction, due to the immediacy of available reactant surface.

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Magnifiedmicronizedcoal images

Sonic Standing Wave Combustion (SSWC)

When a normal flame burns, it is composed of a colony of micro-explosions of fuel matter, with the resultant superheated gases appearing to human eyes as light spectra. The gases are driven in the opposite direction from the fuel source due to the density differential of the atmosphere. The gas expansion spherizes, then forms a plume that tapers off as the gases cool, giving us our well defined tapered flame elipses.

As the micro-explosions occur, the liberated gases, once part of complex molecular (fuel) structures, are released as elemental products of combustion. The normal expansion of the superheated, light emitting gases reverses as the gas stream cools, leading to contractions and the recombination of the elements into new molecules such as nitrous and other oxides. If sulphur is present in the burn process, (e.g. coal combustion), sulphuric oxides form, resulting in the phenomenon known as acid rain.

Co-combustion with limestone to prevent acid precipitation is a common, but expensive process for coal burning in power stations and industrial thermal systems.

As the recombination occurs, the ensuing reactions start and finish at staggered intervals. In other words, a certain amount of time is necessary for the recombination reactions to occur.SSWC prevents most of these undesirable reactions.

The ecoTECH SSWC burner is a device designed to induce low frequency pressure (sound) waves accross its air inlet throat. This is similar to the reverberation induced to create the sounds of musical wind instruments. The standing wave reverberation is tuned to suit the dimensions of the burner and a flame disruption frequency occurs, preventing the velocity of the gases from driving the heat quickly through the combustion chamber.

In standard flame systems, fuel and injected air pressures, plus the explosive combustion process, drive the superheated gases through the combustion and heat gathering zones very quickly. The direction of the heat movement is linear and swift. Serpentine heat pathways have to be designed into the heat transfer sections of boilers or fireboxes to garner enough heat from the fast flowing hot gas stream.

The velocity of the gas stream is of critical importance to the retention of the burn in the designed heat zones of the thermal system. Slowing the linear motion of the heat flux in the thermal system gives enough time for complete burnout of any carbon particulate in the flame area and in the case of contaminated or organic wastes, combustion is completed to a point of sterility, meeting international guidelines for pathogen kill of at least 2 seconds.

This is achieved with an unprecedented amount of heat radiance and retention time by the standing pressure wave that creats the staccato reverberation of the flame. Further, the high frequency (400-1600 Hz) of the combustion unit flame disruption gives no time for the unwanted recombination reactions to occur. One benefit of this is our proven, near-zero NOx burn results!

A sound wave (pressure wave), traveling through a fluid medium (such as a liquid or a gaseous material) has a longitudinal nature. This means that the particles of the medium vibrate in direction which is parallel (an anti-parallel) to the direction which the sound wave travels.

If the sound wave travels from west to east, then the particles of the medium vibrate from west to east (and east-west). As a sound wave impinges upon a particle of air, that particle is temporarily disturbed from its rest position. This particle in turn impinges upon its nearest neighbor, causing it to be displaced from its rest position. The displacement of several nearby particles produces a region of space

in which several particles are compressed together.

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Such a region is known as a compression or high pressure region. A restoring force typically pulls each particle back towards its original rest position. As the particles are pulled away from each other, a region is created in which the particles are spread apart. Such a region is known as a rarefaction or low pressure region. A sound wave consists of an alternating pattern of high pressure (compressions) and low pressure (rarefactions) regions traveling through the medium. This is known as a pressure wave.

A standing wave pattern is a pattern which results from the interference of two or more waves along the same medium. All standing wave patterns are characterized by positions along the medium which are standing still. Such positions are referred to as nodal positions or nodes. Nodes are the result of the meeting of a crest with a trough; this form of interference is known as destructive interference and leads to a point of “no displacement.” A node is a point of no displacement.

Standing wave patterns are also characterized by antinodal positions - positions along the medium that undergo maximum displacement from a high upward displacement to a high downward displacement. Antinodes are the result of a crest meeting a crest to form a supercrest and a trough meeting a trough to form a supertrough. Standing wave patterns are always characterized by an alternating pattern of nodes and antinodes.

What does this mean? We get the benefit of a high-radiance flame, which tends to be "mushroom" shaped, rather than having the "spear blade" profile of the usual high velocity flame, (see picture below).

Summary of Advantages

High Radiance BurnFull Burn-out of Particulate CarbonNo Airborne AshNear Zero NOXLong Residence Time in Heat ZonesFull Pathogen Kill for OrganicsGreenhouse Gas Formation Disrupted

CLEAN BURN = CLEAN ENERGY!

Standard burn illustration with the usual high velocity tapered flame and heat directed through the chamber, whereas the SSWC burn radiates the heat to the walls of the chamber, producing more efficient and economical fuel consumption.

The mushroom corona and high radiance of the Clean Energy pulsing flame can be seen in this photo from our thermodynamics laboratory.

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Ash in the raw coal is floated

We specialize in co-firing systems design that utilize biomass (wood waste, semi-dry manure, bagasse, peat), leonardite, lignite, semi-biuminous & bituminous coal, anthracite and hydrocarbon liquids or gases in any permutation of ingredients. Below and on the next page are system diagram examples of multi-fuel combination combustion.

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ecoTECH Waste Management Systems (1991) Inc. a Canada Federal Corporation

British Columbia, Canada.

tel: +1 604 755 9363 fax +1 604 357 1357Web links:

www.etwm.ca , www.ecotechenergygroup.com ,www.ecophaser.ca , www.ts2000-star.com

e-mail:cvh@etwm.ca

ecoTECH Waste Management Systems (1991) Inc.

a Canada Federal Corporation

British Columbia, Canada.

tel: +1 604 755 9363 fax +1 604 357 1375Web links:

www.ecotechenergygroup.com, www.etwm.ca ,www.ecophaser.ca , www.ts2000-star.com

e-mail: cvh@etwm.ca