Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
201100035
Realizing BF Long Campaign Life and Stable Running by Burden Distribution Adjustment
Shang Ce, Zhu Jianwei*, and Zhang Yanhui
Anshan Iron and Steel Group Corporation Anshan City Liaoning province, 114021 China * Corresponding author; e-mail: zhujw@ansteel.com.cn Adjusting Burden distribution is one of the most important and effective operations. In terms of xed equipment, charging materials and blowing regulation, the inner gas ow utilization could be improved by adjusting the burden distribution to achieve a well-state skull, good blast furnace (BF) performance and long campaign life. The No.1 BF (the effective volume is 3200 m3) was equipped with a bell-less top, cast iron cooling staves in the hearth and copper cooling plates from the belly to the lower shaft respectively. Although the satised indexes have been reached since blow on, the uctuation caused by the skull dropping off happened several times. This resulted in the lining temperatures varying greatly, the coke ratio increasing and the product quality deteriorating. It is considered the main reason for the operation regulation not matching the varied conditions with deteriorating materials and continuous lower temperatures of hot metal etc. A type of effective charging mode is introduced in the paper to complete the BF long-term stable running and long operation. Keywords: Blast furnace Skull Adjustment Burden distribution Submitted on 2 February 2011, accepted on 10 February 2011
Introduction In April 8, 2003, the No.1 BF equipped with a bell-less top, cast iron cooling staves in the hearth and copper cooling plates from the belly to the lower shaft blew on, and a nice target aim was achieved in a short period. Sometimes the uctuation occurred with the quality deterioration of charging materials and inadequate operation. This uctuation, if not handled properly, used to result in the skull dropping off, the lining temperatures at some points in the belly soaring quickly (Fig. 1), the temperature of cooling water going up (Fig. 2), the coke ratio increasing and the product quality deteriorating, and further making a large impact to the working life of lining rebricks and cooling equipment. In order to make the skull work stable and keep a reasonable inner shape, adjusting burden distribution is considered to be an effective method.
Adjustment of Burden Distribution The functions of adjusting burden distribution properly are as follows. (1) It could increase BF output, improve working status and reduce fuel ratio. The resistance of rising gas ow to the burden is on the scale of 40%-50% of the effective burden weight. The gas distribution is asymmetry, so the resistance distribution to the dropping burden is also different. By monitoring the charging materials quality, operators often change the gas distribution through adjusting burden distribution to reduce resistance. (2) It could prolong the campaign life of BF. Because the excessively extended wall ow of gas corrodes the lining rebricks seriously, if the gas wall ow were controlled properly through adjusting burden distribution, the rebrick lining could be well protected, and the
www.steelresearch-journal.com
529
Full Paper
gas could be used more effectively. This is the basic rule of the burden distribution adjustment [1]. (3) Some of the disorders including gas ow resistance increasing, frequently skull falling off, the skull getting thicker etc. can be forecast and disposed of through adjusting the burden distribution. Adjusting the burden distribution is an important method to the bell-less BF operation and is called upper adjustment. Its basic principle bases itself on making use of the function of the top equipment and burden characters to make the gas distribution reasonable. These include controlling the falling points and amount of the charging materials to obtain a good shape of accumulated layer and reasonable radial and circle distribution for different materials. A good gas distribution in BF could fulll the ultimate requirement in smelt processing, which includes utilizing the heat and chemistry energy more efciently, smoothing the burden movement, and keeping the BF in stable. The charging material is distributed through the material slot in the top of the bell-less BF. The experience shows that when the charging material near the wall forms a platform of a certain width, which is shown at Fig. 3 (this is a sketch map), the BF runs well. This has been treated as a useful rule for the bell-less BF and widely adopted [2]. The Practice of Burden Distribution on the No.1 BF The main factors of skull falling off are summed up as listed below [3]. (1) Adopting unsuitable blowing and charging regulations, which made the wall ow of gas stronger. (2) A change of cooling regulation resulted in the reduction of cooling intensity. (3) An unstable heat balance made it difcult to form a stable skull. (4) A special operation, such as cleaning over-thick skull by adopting a special charging mode was carried out. (5) When the viscosity of melted slag increases rapidly, the skull frequently falls off as a result of its increasing weight. The burden distribution adjustment applied on the No.1 BF to stabilize the skull. The situation of skull instability happened at No.1 BF previously puzzled the operators. Though a variety of
530
methods had been adopted in order to solve this problem, the unstable status had never been resolved thoroughly. In the second half of 2007, a series of adjustments on burden distribution were undertaken to control the gas wall ow. At the start, the temperature variability of rebrick was slightly increased, and the recurrence of skull dropping off became longer (from an average of 4 to 7 days). It seemed that skull falling off had been restrained to some extent, but was still not perfect. Could the long-term stability of skull be realized through burden distribution adjustment? Since December 15, 2007, on the basis of xed raw materials and fuel quality and overall sinter weight ratio (sinter/sinter pellet), a revolutionary charging mode was put into practice by thoroughly changing the pellet charging mode. In contrast to the previous way of charging sinter, pellet and raw ore in one batch (Table 1), we only charge sinter in one batch, and then put pellet, sinter and raw ore in another batch (Table 2). For the two batches of charging, the overall sinter weight ratio was kept at an unchanged 72%. With the new mode running, the phenomenon of skull falling off was well improved and has never happened since December 31, 2007, which was a long period since the BF blew on. At the same time, the quality of pig iron, coke rate and other key indexes were improved greatly (Table 3). The analysis of the skull stability improved by adjusting burden distribution.
Table 1. charging mode before adjustment Name Batch Amount (t) Raw ore 3.0 14.3 Sinter 54.0 Coke 4 Pellet 21.0 14.3 Raw ore 3.0 Small coke 2.0 72 Small coke 2.0 Sinter weight ratio (%) 72
Iron ore
Sinter 54.0
Pellet 21.0
2 3
Table 2. charging mode after adjustment Name Batch Amount (t) Raw ore Small coke 2.0 14.3 Sinter 30.0 Coke 4 Pellet 42.0 14.3 Raw ore 6.0 Small coke 2.0 42 Sinter weight ratio (%) 100
Iron ore
Sinter 78.0
Pellet
2 3
www.steelresearch-journal.com
Full Paper
Table 3. Comparison of technical indexes before and after changing Time period 12.0112.15, 2007 12.1612.31, 2007 Coke rate (Kg/t. Fe) 311 303 Ratio of BF top Productivity unqualied temperature (T/m3.d) pig iron (%) (8C) 13.6 3.1 2.423 2.540 223 212
Table 4. Metallurgical properties of charging materials Charging material Sinter (sample 1) Pellet (sample 1) Beginning temperature of melting (8C) 1372 1253 Ending temperature of melting (8C) 1518 1453 Melt zone (8C) 146 200
For the metallurgical properties test of sinter and pellet, the temperature is normally taken into account when a great deal of liquid appears as the starting temperature of melting, and when a drop of melted iron appears as the ending temperature of melting. It could be seen (Table 4) that the beginning temperature of melting for pellet is lower and the melt zone (temperature extent from the beginning of melting to the end) is relatively small compared with that of sinter. In the process of whole production, the pellet softens and melts earlier than the sinter does, by which time the melted pellet near the wall easily sticks to the lining to form part of the skull. After the new charging mode is undertaken, the amount of pellet near the wall is dramatically reduced. This greatly reduced the amount of skull created by the melted pellet. In this way, the puzzle was ultimately solved by slowing down the growing of sticky skull in the melting process. Conclusion The stable working skull plays an important role in BF running. If well-treated, it could help to keep BF in a
reasonable internal shape and in an ideal working state, making the rebrick lining and cooling plates well protected, and to further realize the BF long working life. Through a great deal of exploration and practice in adjusting burden distribution, an effective method was found and the condition of unstable skull in No.1 BF was improved dramatically. However, the production process of iron making is very complicated and also needs other inuencing factors to be stable and optimized. For better performance and good technical indexes in the future, the examination of the burden distribution would be continuously carried out and extended to other BFs in Ansteel. References
[1] Liu Yuncai: Charging operation of BF. Iron-making, 2006 25(1). [2] Xu Yonghua, Wu Min, Cao Weihua: Study on Modeling for Coke Collapse of Burden Distribution in a Blast Furnace. China Metallurgy, 2007 17(6). [3] Chen Peidun, Shao Shudong: Slight Analysis to Prole Management of BF Operation and Regular BF Performance. China Metallurgy, 2006 16(3).
www.steelresearch-journal.com
531