1424 XXXI International Mineral Processing Congress 2024 Proceedings/Washington, DC/Sep 29–Oct 3
staggering gain of $91.2 million annually. Unfortunately,
unrealized gains such as these do occur in practice for inef-
ficient plants suffering from inadequate design and/or poor
operating practices. Also, given that spot metallurgical coal
prices have often recently exceeded $400 per tonne (Seah
et al 2022), it is more important than ever for operators to
critically evaluate their coal cleaning and blending facili-
ties to ensure that they fully optimize the value of the coal
resources supplied to their operations.
In light of the above economic drivers, this manuscript
highlights six critical steps that can be undertaken by coal
producers to ensure the optimal utilization of coal resources
fed to their CPPs. These are:
1. Matching coal sales contract specifications to avail-
able coal resources producing maximum $margin
2. Monitoring and optimizing plant processing cir-
cuit efficiency
3. Defining plant and blending efficiencies in mon-
etary terms
4. Optimizing yields through running equal incre-
mental qualities in all circuits in all plants feeding
the same sales contract, ash if that is the main qual-
ity constraint
5. Developing, implementing and auditing best oper-
ating practices
6. Applying appropriate circuitry to maximize plant
performance and profitability
STEPS TO MAXIMIZE PROFITABILITY
Matching Sales Contracts and Resource Quality
Coal is often sold at the highest realization per tonne in
situations where the sales force is unaware of the impact
of stricter quality specifications on clean coal yield. It is
noteworthy that contracts with the highest realization most
often do not produce the highest overall profit margin. In
most cases, experiences have shown that lower price-per-
tonne sales contracts can provide a higher level of profit-
ability than a higher price-per-tonne coal contract due to
higher yields in the plant producing the coal. It is critically
important that personnel in the coal sales team develop
or are provided with the ability to accurately calculate the
actual cost, particularly in terms of lost plant yield, of pro-
ducing clean coal products with different quality specifica-
tions for the various coals fed to a CPP.
To fully illustrate this point, an example of matching
coal sales contracts to available resources are provided in
Table 1. All quality specifications are reported on an as-
received (AR) basis. This case study was conducted for
high-middlings coal that had been cleaned to meet a base-
line 6,600 kcal energy coal contract. Under this specifica-
tion, the plant generated 350,000 tonnes of clean coal that
was sold for $49.58 per tonne, as shown in Table 1. This
table also provides the price-quality matrix for four alterna-
tive clean coal products that could be generated to satisfy
other contracts. Options 1 and 2 involve the production
of higher calorific value (CV) products and both provide
a higher per-tonne realization (i.e., $50.00 and $50.37,
respectively). However, both of these two alternatives
would require the plant to lower the clean coal plant yield
to make these quality specifications, thereby lowering the
tonnes of clean coal available for sale, resulting in 10,000
less tonnes for Option 1 and 17,000 less tonnes for Option
2. As such, required breakeven realization for higher quality
products is considerably greater than the high yielding base
case. This is despite the fact that the higher CV product
attracts the highest realization. In fact, offering the clean
coal as a 6,750-kcal product as opposed to a 6,600-kcal
base case product would require a net realization of $2.90
more per tonne. This impact far exceeds the heat-adjusted
value of $50.37 per tonne, which is only $0.79 more.
In contrast, Options 3 and 4 provide increases in
saleable clean coal tonnage (40,000 and 61,000 tonnes,
respectively) due to the higher plant yields resulting from
the lower quality demands (6,400 and 6,300 kcal, respec-
tively). Assuming the price adjustments were purely on a
CV basis, the lower quality 6,300 kcal product specification
required by Option 4 would lower the heat-adjusted mar-
ket value of the clean coal product down to only $47.73
0
5
10
15
20
25
0 20 40 60 80 100
Clean Coal Yield (%)
Coal Price ($/tonne) →
1,000 tonne/hour feed {dry}
7,600 hour/year operation
Figure 1. Unit gain/loss in revenue for a one percentage point
increase/decrease in organic efficiency for a hypothetical
1,000 tph CPP
)ry/$noilliM(ssoLycneiciffEtinU
staggering gain of $91.2 million annually. Unfortunately,
unrealized gains such as these do occur in practice for inef-
ficient plants suffering from inadequate design and/or poor
operating practices. Also, given that spot metallurgical coal
prices have often recently exceeded $400 per tonne (Seah
et al 2022), it is more important than ever for operators to
critically evaluate their coal cleaning and blending facili-
ties to ensure that they fully optimize the value of the coal
resources supplied to their operations.
In light of the above economic drivers, this manuscript
highlights six critical steps that can be undertaken by coal
producers to ensure the optimal utilization of coal resources
fed to their CPPs. These are:
1. Matching coal sales contract specifications to avail-
able coal resources producing maximum $margin
2. Monitoring and optimizing plant processing cir-
cuit efficiency
3. Defining plant and blending efficiencies in mon-
etary terms
4. Optimizing yields through running equal incre-
mental qualities in all circuits in all plants feeding
the same sales contract, ash if that is the main qual-
ity constraint
5. Developing, implementing and auditing best oper-
ating practices
6. Applying appropriate circuitry to maximize plant
performance and profitability
STEPS TO MAXIMIZE PROFITABILITY
Matching Sales Contracts and Resource Quality
Coal is often sold at the highest realization per tonne in
situations where the sales force is unaware of the impact
of stricter quality specifications on clean coal yield. It is
noteworthy that contracts with the highest realization most
often do not produce the highest overall profit margin. In
most cases, experiences have shown that lower price-per-
tonne sales contracts can provide a higher level of profit-
ability than a higher price-per-tonne coal contract due to
higher yields in the plant producing the coal. It is critically
important that personnel in the coal sales team develop
or are provided with the ability to accurately calculate the
actual cost, particularly in terms of lost plant yield, of pro-
ducing clean coal products with different quality specifica-
tions for the various coals fed to a CPP.
To fully illustrate this point, an example of matching
coal sales contracts to available resources are provided in
Table 1. All quality specifications are reported on an as-
received (AR) basis. This case study was conducted for
high-middlings coal that had been cleaned to meet a base-
line 6,600 kcal energy coal contract. Under this specifica-
tion, the plant generated 350,000 tonnes of clean coal that
was sold for $49.58 per tonne, as shown in Table 1. This
table also provides the price-quality matrix for four alterna-
tive clean coal products that could be generated to satisfy
other contracts. Options 1 and 2 involve the production
of higher calorific value (CV) products and both provide
a higher per-tonne realization (i.e., $50.00 and $50.37,
respectively). However, both of these two alternatives
would require the plant to lower the clean coal plant yield
to make these quality specifications, thereby lowering the
tonnes of clean coal available for sale, resulting in 10,000
less tonnes for Option 1 and 17,000 less tonnes for Option
2. As such, required breakeven realization for higher quality
products is considerably greater than the high yielding base
case. This is despite the fact that the higher CV product
attracts the highest realization. In fact, offering the clean
coal as a 6,750-kcal product as opposed to a 6,600-kcal
base case product would require a net realization of $2.90
more per tonne. This impact far exceeds the heat-adjusted
value of $50.37 per tonne, which is only $0.79 more.
In contrast, Options 3 and 4 provide increases in
saleable clean coal tonnage (40,000 and 61,000 tonnes,
respectively) due to the higher plant yields resulting from
the lower quality demands (6,400 and 6,300 kcal, respec-
tively). Assuming the price adjustments were purely on a
CV basis, the lower quality 6,300 kcal product specification
required by Option 4 would lower the heat-adjusted mar-
ket value of the clean coal product down to only $47.73
0
5
10
15
20
25
0 20 40 60 80 100
Clean Coal Yield (%)
Coal Price ($/tonne) →
1,000 tonne/hour feed {dry}
7,600 hour/year operation
Figure 1. Unit gain/loss in revenue for a one percentage point
increase/decrease in organic efficiency for a hypothetical
1,000 tph CPP
)ry/$noilliM(ssoLycneiciffEtinU