A new developed technology for extracting alumina from coal fly ash was studied in this paper. In this technology, coal fly ash is first sintered with ammonium sulfate, forming ammonium aluminum sulfate in the resultant product, where alumina can be easily leached without using any strong acid or alkali. The products obtained under different sintering conditions were characterized by X-ray diffractometry. Alumina extraction efficiency of these products was also investigated. The results show that the sintering temperature and time substantially influence the phase composition and alumina extraction efficiency of sintered products, while the heating rate has little influence. The optimal sintering condition is 400 °C for 3 h in air with a heating rate of 6 °C·min-1.Under the optimal sintering condition, the alumina extraction efficiency from as-sintered coal fly ash can reach 85% or more.
To study the influence of the Soret and Dufour effects on the reactive characteristics of a porous packed bed with endothermic reactions and forced convection, a two-dimensional mathematical model considering the cross-diffusion effects was developed in accordance with the thermodynamics of irreversible processes and the local thermal non-equilibrium model. The simulation results were validated by comparing with experimental data. The influence of the Soret and Dufour effects on the heat transfer, mass transfer and endothermic chemical reaction in the non-thermal equilibrium packed bed is discussed. It was found that when the Peclet number reaches 1865, the maximum relative error of the concentration of gas product induced by the Soret effect is 34.7% and that of the solid fractional conversion caused by the Dufour effect is 10.8% at reaction time 160 s and initial temperature 1473 K. The differences induced by the Soret and Dufour effects are demonstrated numerically to increase gradually with the initial temperature of feeding gas and the Peclet number.
