Investigations were carried out on coking coal fines by conventional cell and column flotation techniques. The effects of different operating parameters were evaluated for both conventional and column flotation. The coal fines were collected from Bhojudih washery, India. These coal fines averaged 24.4% ash, 19.8% volatile matter and 53.8% fixed carbon on a dry basis. A commercial grade sodium silicate, light diesel oil and pine oil were used as depressant, collector and frother respectively. The flotation performance was compared with release analysis. The conventional flotation results indicated that a clean coal with 14.4% ash could be obtained at 78.0% yield with 88.4% combustible recovery. The ash of the clean coal could be further reduced to 10.1% at 72.0% yield with 85.6% combustible recovery by using column flotation. The column flotation results were close to those obtained by release analysis. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.