Objective
The objective is better recovery of nickel from slags through better process control in order to raise productivity and save energy in ferronickel production.
Research was carried out in order to develop an automatic process control system for the recovery of metal from slags and therefore contribute with better process control to better recovery of the mechanical metal losses from the ERF slags in the ferronickel production.
The combination of metallurgical experiments with the high technology of laser based analysis was the first challenge in the project. For this, metallurgical experimental apparatus was designed consisting of a MF generator and a dedicated induction furnace capable to work under inert atmosphere for the smelting of the slags. The system provided facilities for the adaptation of laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), temperature control and gas injection into the melts. The laser based system was adapted for assessing and monitoring the metal content of the slag. The LIBS system speeded up the analysis providing more efficient process control and enabling further optimization of the process of recovery.
Modelling work on the sedimentation and settling of the fine metal drops dispersion has been carried out. The validity of Stokes' behaviour has been investigated as well as the determination of the drop size distribution function from the exisitng data from ERF slags. Some new paths in describing the sedimentation of a drop dispersion as a whole have been investigated and the foundations and prerequisites for development of the process simulation have been elaborated. For the given concentrations of metal the drops behave according to Stokes' law. The initial drop size distribution extracted from the existing data is not the relative recovery size (RRS) distribution as suggested by earlier work. Irrespective of this special form, to be useful in the simulation of the recovery process, the relative recovery of metal has been determined by modelling. It confirms experimental results on exponential recovery behaviour.
The concept of the data acquisition tools for the LIBS system has been dev eloped enabling the control of the furnace system by supplying real time information about the metal content at the surface of the molten slag.
An automatic process control system will be developed for the recovery of mechanical nickel losses in slag arising from the production of ferronickel in the electric reduction furnace of LARCO at the Larymna plant. Methodological development will help applicability to other comparable processes.
The project will be in the following stages.
Construction and setup of a dedicated induction furnace with a graphite susceptor and a refractory crucible and with the possibilities of temperature control and gas injection from the top or from the side of the crucible.
The development of a laser based system for assessing and monitoring the metal content of the slag is proposed. The proposed system, laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), will speed up the analysis of the recovery of metal, provide more efficient process control and enable further optimization. The basic steps in LIBS are : atomization of the sample; excitation of the resulting atoms; and detection of the emitted radiation from the atoms. Both atomization and excitation can be achieved by focusing a neodymium, yttrium aluminium garnet(YAG) laser on the molten slag free surface, resulting in the creation of a microplasma. The emitted radiation will be spectrally resolved by means of a monochromator coupled with an optical multichannel analyzer (OMA III). The work parts to be done are :
preliminary measurements on solid slag containing nickel and ferronickel in order to be used as reference standards;
online monitoring with data acquisition and sensor system integration for the actual molten systems;
testing and validation;
and metallurgical support during the experiments.
The control system stage will involve:
metal concentration values given by the LIBS system modelled to obtain the actual metal content in the slag;
thermal control linked with the process computer;
control of the gas (or gas mixtures) flow rates to be injected into the slag melt linked with the process computer.
The information processing stage will involve:
observed values continuously stored in an appropriate database in order to be compared to the simulated values;
special, easy to solve, mathematical model of ordinary differential equations developed to simulate the recovery process;
and a simulation programme developed in advanced continuous simulation language (ACSL) to allow online simulation.
The final stage is system integration.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences geology sedimentology
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering control systems
- natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry transition metals
- engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering sensors
- natural sciences physical sciences optics laser physics
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Coordinator
52134 Herzogenrath
Germany
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