A demonstration plant and a commercial plant employing coal dry cleaning technology with an air-solid fluidized bed were built in China. The operation practice of these two plants shows that the surface moisture and the fines or dust of feed coal must be well controlled as low as possible. For this purpose, a new process of combined removal of surface moisture and dust from feed coal using a vibrated fluidized bed dryer was investigated in a batch test apparatus and a pilot test system. A mathematical model on drying kinetics of coal surface moisture was developed and three empirical formulas of the model coefficient involving the main operating variables were determined based on the test results from the batch test apparatus. The mathematical model shows that the surface moisture retained in coal during drying decreases exponentially with drying time. According to this model, a new divisional heat supply mode, in which the inlet gas of higher temperature was introduced into the fore part of the dryer and the inlet gas of lower temperature into the rear part of the dryer, was employed in the pilot test system. The pilot tests show that 1) the new divisional heat supply mode is effective for lowering down the average temperature and reducing the total heat loss of the outlet gas off the dryer, 2) the moist coal of about 60 g/kg surface moisture contentcan be dried to about 10 g/kg, and simultaneously the fines (