Comprehensive Evaluation of the Combustion Kinetic Characteristics of Owukpa Coal

Coal is a cheap and widely abundant fossil fuel that currently accounts for a significant share (35–40%) of the global energy mix. As a result, coal-fired electricity has catalyzed rapid socioeconomic growth and sustainable development worldwide. With the rapidly growing global energy demands, emerging economies like Nigeria need to address their widespread energy crises. Coal utilization for power generation is proposed as a panacea for the persistent power shortages, blackouts, and load shedding typically experienced in Nigeria. However, coal-fired power generation in Nigeria requires a comprehensive examination of the fuel properties, energy recovery potential, and emissions profiles of coal feedstocks, which is currently lacking in the literature. Therefore, this paper presents the comprehensive physicochemical, microstructure, mineralogical and thermal fuel properties of Owukpa (WKP) coal to evaluate its potential for future energy recovery and industrial applications. The results demonstrated that it contains high combustible elements, heating value (26.7 MJ/kg), and low potential for NOx and SOx emissions. Microstructural and mineralogical analyses revealed a mix of coarse-grained particles indicating the occurrence of carbonaceous and aluminosilicate minerals such as quartz, and kaolinite. Thermal properties of WKP revealed its low-rank coal (LRC) properties such as high thermal reactivity, which resulted from high mass loss (93.69 to 95.87%) and low residual mass (6.31 to 4.13%) during multiple heating rate TGA combustion. Kinetic analysis revealed that WKP is considerably reactive due to its low activation energy (E_a) and frequency factor (A), which ranged from E_a = 28.86 to 57.29 kJ/mol, whereas the A = 5.97 to 9.86 min^–1 computed at high correlation R² values of 0.97 to 1.0. The results showed that Owukpa (WKP) is a low-rank coal (LRC) with potential for electricity generation and other industrial applications.