Microwave drying of a low-rank sub-bituminous coal

•Comparison of microwave and conventional drying of a sub-bituminous coal.•Permittivities of coal as a function of temperature and composition.•Drying rates as a function of time, power, moisture content and sample mass.•Fitting of data to thin-layer drying models.•Determination of effective diffusion coefficients and activation energies. The moisture contents of coals are often too high and need to be reduced before further processing. In this study, the application of microwave radiation as an alternative energy source for the drying of a sub-bituminous coal was investigated. Firstly, the permittivities of the coal were evaluated as a function of temperature and frequency. Secondly, the drying kinetics were studied in a 2.45GHz microwave system and the effects of incident microwave power, sample mass and initial moisture contents were determined. The results demonstrated that microwave drying had several advantages over conventional drying such as increased drying rates and lower final moisture contents. In some tests, magnetite was added as a susceptor to increase the drying rates. Thirdly, the drying data were fitted to ten exponential decay models, and although reasonable agreement was observed with all the models, the best fit was obtained with the Midilli–Kucuk model. Finally, the effective diffusion coefficients of moisture and also the activation energy of the diffusion process were estimated and used to further elucidate the mechanism of microwave drying.