Coal is a very important fuel since the supply of oil is quite limited, whereas coal is much more plentiful. The pressurized fluidized bed combustion (PFBC) and integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) systems are considered the best for advanced coal-fired power plants. However, the high temperature syngas produced by these systems contains many dust particulates which need to be filtered before entering the gas turbine. The moving granular bed is an important apparatus for the filtration of the hot gas and is currently under development. The goal of this study is to evaluate the performance of a moving granular bed filter designed to filter out coal particulates. We investigate the flow patterns of the filter granules, the collection efficiency, and the pressure drop under different filtration superficial velocities, mass flow rates of filter granules, rotational speeds of the trommel screen system, but with a fixed inlet dust concentration. All filtration system experiments were performed at room temperature. The results showed that using a filtration superficial velocity of 18.01 m/min, mass flow rate of filter granules of 0.46 kg/min, and rotational speed of 63 rpm, the overall porosity of the filter granules decreased and the filter resistance and the collection efficiency increased, with an increase in the amount of smaller-sized filter granules in the bed. The test results apply to moving granular bed filters or other filtration systems functioning in high-temperature environments and are expected to serve as the basis for future research. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.