Comparative Study of Raw and Water Rinsed Loa Janan’s Bituminous Coal Structure

East Kalimantan’s Coal has total humidity level at 18.21%, inherent humidity of 12.39%, fly ash content of 5.18%, volatile compounds of 38.22% and heat content of 6084 kcal/kg. However, chemical composition, functional group and crystallinity of raw and water rinsed Loa Janan bituminous coal have not been reported elsewhere. This research aims to investigate whether water rinsed treatment affects the structure of the coal or not. Coal size at 100 mesh-200 mesh is divided into 2, labeled as bituminous (a) stands for raw bituminous and bituminous (b) is for water rinsed-one. The bituminous (a) was analyzed using scanning electron miscroscopy (SEM)-energy dispersive xray (EDX), x-ray fluorescence (XRF), fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and powder x-ray diffraction (p-XRD) spectrophotometer. Meanwhile, bituminous (b) was heated at 40°C for 10 hours, cooled, rinsed using aquademin (1:5), stirred for 3 hours at 1500 rpm, and filtered. The bituminous (b) was heated at 40°C for another 10 hours and was characterized using the same technique as conducted to bituminous (a). Images revealed by SEM-EDX confirms the morphology ang topology of bituminous coal and the carbon content of them are 70.24% ± 0.87 (coal a) and 70.73% ± 0.08 (coal b). X-ray fluorescence analysis revealed that the bituminous (a) consisted of: Fe (46%), Si (21.5%), Al (5.4%) and bituminous (b): Fe (45%), Si (18.4%), Al (4.5%). There is a significant difference of their infrared spectra, both showed the peak at 1620 cm -1 (C=C) for carbon aromatic vibration. The wide area of peak at 3423 cm -1 is responsible for OH stretching vibration. Peaks intensity at 1620 cm -1 and 3420 cm -1 of bituminous (b) increased about 43.11% and 43.34%, respectively. The crystallinity degree of bituminous (b) (47.56%) is lower than that of bituminous (a) (69.72%). A sharp peak of XRD spectrum located at 2θ of 26.6 o ( hkl = 002) was responsible for both quartz and graphite.