Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

THE COAL CHARACTERIZATION USING PROXIMATE AND ULTIMATE ANALYSIS- A CASE STUDY OF SOUTH SUMATERA COAL, INDONESIA

Aryansyah, Eddy Ibrahim, Subriyer Nasir and Muhammad Said

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present study is aimed to characterize the coal samples taken from the commercial mining of PT. Bukit Asam in South Sumatera, Indonesia, through the proximate and ultimate analysis. The proximate analysis is carried out as the analytical evaluation of several parameters such moisture, volatile matter, ash, and fixed carbon where the ultimate analysis determine the percentages of each element consisted in the coal samples such as sulfur, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and gross calorific value (GCV). The proximate analysis showed that the moisture content in the coal samples range between 3.2% and 9.13% with the ash vary from 7.26% to 11.46%. The volatile matters in the coals samples ranges between 30.79% - 41.96% and fixed carbon varies in the range between 33.01% and 54.60%. The increase of fixed carbon is positively correlated to the number of caloric value of the coal sample in which the coal samples of 5000 and 6500 caloric values have quite similar values of fixed carbon. However, the ultimate analysis confirmed that the carbon content of the coal sample which has 6500 caloric has lower carbon content compared to the coal sample which has 5000 caloric values. The gross caloric values also support the carbon content result by showing the coal sample of 5000 caloric values is the sample which has highest GCV. Therefore, the correlation between the proximate and ultimate analysis played the important role in the determining of the coal quality.