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Genesis of some tertiary Indian coals from the chemical composition of ash – a statistical approach: Part 1

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Abstract

In the present investigation, 37 numbers of high sulphur tertiary coal samples from Meghalaya, India have been studied on the basis of proximate and ash analysis. Various statistical tools like Bivariant Analysis, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Hierarchical Clustering Analysis (HCA), and also the geochemical indicators were applied to determine the dominant detrital or authigenic affinity of the ash forming elements in these coals. The genetic interpretation of coal as well as the coal ash has been carried out based on chemical compositions of high temperature ash (HTA) by using Detrital/Authigenic Index. X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis was also carried out to study the mineralogy of the studied coal ashes. Both statistical tools and geochemical indicators have confirmed the detrital nature of these coals as well as the ash forming elements.

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Acknowledgement

The authors are thankful to the Ministry of Steel, Govt. of India, New Delhi and CSIR, New Delhi for financial assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Coal Chemistry Division, CSIR–North East Institute of Science & Technology, Jorhat, 785 006, Assam, India

    Arpita Sharma, Ananya Saikia & B P Baruah

  2. Agronomy-Soil Division, CSIR–CIMAP, Lucknow, 226 015, India

    Puja Khare

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  1. Arpita Sharma
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  2. Ananya Saikia
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  3. Puja Khare
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  4. B P Baruah
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Correspondence to B P Baruah.

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Sharma, A., Saikia, A., Khare, P. et al. Genesis of some tertiary Indian coals from the chemical composition of ash – a statistical approach: Part 1. J Earth Syst Sci 123, 1705–1715 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-014-0479-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-014-0479-z

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