Modelagem e simulação do processo de produção de coque metalúrgico.

Abstract

Currently, the main steel production route in the world is the Basic Oxygen Oven (BOF), whose main process is the blast furnace. Besides iron ore, the second most important raw material used in this process is metallurgical coke. Metallurgical coke is produced by a process known, popularly, as coking which is a technique of carbonization of a particular coal mixture. The carbonization of this coal mixture is carried out by heating, in the absence of oxygen. The main technology used for the production of metallurgical coke at present is by-products batteries. In the furnaces of this type of battery the heat is transferred by conduction of the combustion chambers to the coke oven by means of conduction, that way, the coal as soon as it is charged and that it comes in contact with the wall of the furnace it begins to receive energy and starts the transformation process in coke. The main variables measured for the monitoring of the process are the temperatures of some combustion chambers, because once these temperatures are above the coking temperature it is possible to estimate which coal is being coking. Therefore, the coke when being removed from the oven must be cooled rapidly or exposed to an inert atmosphere. Thus, this work consists of simulating the metallurgical coke production process by modeling a coke oven with its combustion chambers, aiming at the optimization of the temperature curve of the combustion chambers, in addition to studying the energy available in the of coke. The maximum error obtained for the adjustment of the temperature profile was less than 0.25%, an operational condition different from that used for the model adjustment was used to verify the representativeness of the model and in this case the average error of the temperature profile was 1.48%.