A simple procedure for the determination of pyritic sulfur content in coal

Abstract A procedure was developed for determining the pyritic sulfur content of the products from physical coal separation processes on the basis of their total sulfur and ash analyses. By assuming that the organic sulfur content in the combustible material in a given coal is constant, a linear relationship was obtained among the pyritic sulfur, total sulfur and ash content of coal samples using the experimental results of a series of flotation experiments and washability tests. The calculated pyritic sulfur contents of various coal product samples agree well with the experimentally determined values. The main advantages of this procedure are that it is simple, reliable, economical and rapid, because the pyritic sulfur can be simply calculated from the easily determined total sulfur and ash contents of the coal.