The tribo-electrostatic method was applied to beneficiate non-coking Indian thermal coal from Ramagundam coal mines containing nearly 45% ash content. The microscopic studies revealed that quartz and kaolinite are the dominant minerals whereas illite, goethite, siderite and pyrite are the minor inclusions in the coal. Contact electrification of ash-forming minerals and coal matter was carried out using different tribo-charger materials of Al, Cu, brass, perspex and teflon. The Cu tribo-charger was found to be optimum to acquire differential charge between ash-forming inorganics and coal matter. The temperature effect on the magnitude of contact charge acquisition was found to be significant. Tests on a laboratory in-house built tribo-clectrostatic free-fall separator with minus 300 gm coal showed that the ash content was reduced from 45% to about 18%, and a clean coal product as judged by the washability studies can be obtained. The results illustrate that the non-coking coals can be beneficiated using the scientific knowledge on the response and behaviour of coal and non-coal matters to electric charges. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.