Evaluation of nickel flash smelting through piloting and simulation
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INTRODUCTION
WESTERN Mining Corporation Ltd. operates a nickel smelter in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. Plans to rebuild the flash smelting furnace with the capacity increased from 55000 to 80,000 tonnes per annum prompted a detailed evaluation of the flash smelting process. The poor burner performance and unreliable operation of the previous furnace underscored the need for a comprehensive study involving extensive pilot plant tests and detailed computer simulation of the multiphase particle/gas flow, heat transfer, and combustion in the burner and shaft of the flash furnace. Some preliminary results of this work were presented in an earlier article.[1] In this article, a more detailed description of the pilot plant measurements, together with new simulation results and analysis, is reported. The pilot plant trials were carried out at the Pyrometallurgical Research Centre (PRC) of the Sumitomo Metal Mining Co.’s Toyo Smelter. The experimental series described in this article tested several burners with different design and operating parameters. For each burner, the furnace was run for at least 3 days, allowing sufficient time for the smelting conditions in the shaft to settle. Measurements of key process parameters have been taken and provide important data for the setup and validation of the mathematical models. The relatively simple nearly axisymmetric geometry of the single burner-shaft assembly of the PRC pilot flash smelter provided an excellent opportunity to validate the physically and chemically complex mathematical model deS.R. VARNAS, formerly Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO Division of Minerals, is Research Scientist, SOLA International Research Centre, Lonsdale, SA. 5160 Australia. N. KEMORI, formerly Smelter Superintendent, Toyo Smelter and Refinery, is Manager, MCLE Section, Niihama Nickel Refinery, Sumitomo Metal Mining Company, Ehime, 792 Japan. P.T.L. KOH, Principal Research Scientist, is with the CSIRO Division of Minerals, Clayton; Victoria 3169, Australia. Manuscript submitted January 8, 1997.
METALLURGICAL AND MATERIALS TRANSACTIONS B
veloped at the CSIRO Division of Minerals.[1,2,3] A twostage approach was taken to simulate the burner-shaft complex. First, the burner was simulated. The burner model includes two-phase flow (gas and solids) and considers only convective and conductive heat transfer. Output from the burner model is used to specify inlet boundary conditions for the shaft model, which includes the dynamic interaction of three phases (gas, solid ore particles of different sizes, and liquid oil droplets), combustion, as well as convective, conductive, and radiative heat transfer. Numerical predictions of the velocity, temperature, and concentration of chemical species fields in both gas and particles have been obtained for each burner-shaft assembly. Some of these values are compared with the measurements in the pilot flash furnace at the PRC. Section II outlines the pilot plant experiments and their results. Section III presents details of the computer simulations, while Secti
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