Dynamic Coal Production Line: Plant Design and Analysis Tool

Abstract

In efforts to find alternative uses for coal, in line with environmental issues, a new coal production plant was designed and will be built in West Virginia to reconstitute coal into environmentally friendly outputs: (i) absorbents, (ii) fertilizers, and (iii) pellets. The coal will be put through a batch production line containing continuous and non-continuous machines. It needs to operate as efficiently as possible to optimize output and reduce costs. The goal of this project is to create a tool in Microsoft Excel that models the operation of the coal plant and simulates its functionality. The platform assists in the optimization and operation of the coal plant by displaying the three interconnected processes performed within the plant. The final deliverable is a user-friendly tool intended for client use that can assist in the coal plant facility design. The design alternatives were identified by modeling the full plant process for all three products, where rows in Excel are utilized to model the time increments. This dynamic model takes the user-specified facility design factors as inputs and displays the entire process in detailed steps to easily visualize a 2D model of the plant and make decisions based on the information displayed. The model can display how the different design specifications of the coal plant, such as conveyor belt length, would affect the output over time. Furthermore, the tool also informs how the tradeoff between capacity and cook time for the Solar Kiln and the Furnace can influence productivity. Although the scope of this project is one coal plant in West Virginia, the tool developed in this project can be used as a template for the optimization of other similar manufacturing systems.