Characterization of coal and coal blends by automatic image analysis: Use of the Leitz texture analysis system

An analytical procedure is described for the microscopic determination of rank and maceral-group composition of seam coal and composition of coal blend using the image analyser TAS (Leitz). The procedure runs automatically and reduces the time of analysis by a factor of 0.1. The results agree with those obtained by conventional methods (reflectance measurements and point-count analysis).