Hot Stove Oxygen-Enriched Combustion in an Iron-Making Plant
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The Swedish and Finnish National Committees of the International Flame Research Foundation – IFRF HOT STOVE OXYGEN-ENRICHED COMBUSTION IN AN IRON-MAKING PLANT Chuan Wang1,*, Andy Cameron2, Axel Bodén1, Jonny Karlsson3, Patrick Lawrence Hooey1,4 1,*Centre for process integration in steelmaking Swerea MEFOS, Luleå, Sweden [email protected] 2Linde Gas, The Priestley Centre, 10 Priestley Road Guildford, Surrey England [email protected] 3SSAB EMEA Luleå Sweden [email protected] 4University of Oulu (Adjunct Professor) Oulun Yliopisto Finland * corresponding author ABSTRACT The presented paper investigates the application of oxygen-enriched combustion in hot stoves in an iron-making plant. The enriched oxygen is used to reduce the consumption of the high calorific value gas of COG while maintaining the same flame temperature in the hot stoves as the reference case. The investigation is carried by using a spreadsheet hot stove model. Compared to the conventional oxygen-enriched combustion, higher stove efficiency can be achieved when heat exchanger is installed to recover the sensible heat in flue gas by preheating combustion air and BFG; higher stove efficiency can also be achieved when parts of flue gas are recirculated to hot stoves. For the studied plant, it indicates that heat exchanger has a better effect than flue gas recirculation in terms of stove efficiency. However, it has been noticed that flue gas recirculation can help to concentrate CO2 content in the flue gas, which will be essential for the carbon capture in the BF iron-making process. Keywords: oxygen-enriched; hot stoves; blast furnace (BF); flue gas recirculation 1. INTRODUCTION Recent years energy intensive processes have shown their great interests on applying oxygen-enriched/oxy-fuel combustion technology to industrial furnaces. Compared to air- fuel combustion, oxygen enrichment requires less fuel for reheating in commercial installations due to the reduction in heat losses to the fuel gas associated with reduction or -1- The Swedish and Finnish National Committees of the International Flame Research Foundation – IFRF elimination of nitrogen from the process gas stream. The theory of oxygen-enriched combustion can be found in [1]. There are also some other advantages for using oxygen- enrichment combustion technologies, such as lower NOx emissions, higher productivity, improved temperature stability and heat transfer [2]. In process of iron-making, hot stoves are often used to preheat air which is used in the blast furnace (BF). Hot stoves work as counter-current regenerative heat exchangers. The preheated air is called hot blast. The hot stoves typically use low calorific blast furnace gas (BFG) combined with higher calorific value cove oven gas (COG). BFG is generated from BF when producing hot metal. COG is a valuable fuel being high in hydrogen (H2) and methane (CH4). For an integrated steel plant, COG is often delivered from the coking plant where coke is produced. Compared to the conventional air-fuel hot stoves, less N2 will be generated which will absorb less reaction heat from the combustion. This will lead to a higher adiabatic flame temperature (AFT) with the same amount of fuel gas. As for the hot stove, therefore, a higher blast temperature can be achieved. On the other hand, the low caloric value fuel gas can also be combusted alone without mixing with enrichment gas, such as COG, LPG or NG, to get the same flame temperature with the use of oxygen enrichment instead. For the second option, Bisio et al. [3] made an analysis on the basis of second laws of thermodynamics. The presented paper is to investigate the potential of using oxygen enrichment in hot stoves at an integrated steel plant. The stove efficiency and fuel consumptions by using air-fuel and oxygen-enriched combustion are calculated and compared. In addition, a new concept, oxygen-enriched combustion with flue gas recirculation into hot stoves under specific conditions, is also presented and compared with conventional oxygen-enriched combustion. 2. Description of hot stove model 2.1 Hot stove – BF system at the studied plant A simple structure of hot stove and blast furnace is presented in Figure 1. The hot stove in the figure includes two separate parts, i.e. the combustion chamber and check chamber. They work as a counter-current regenerative heat exchanger. The fuel gas is first combusted in the combustion chamber. The flue gas passes through the check chamber and heats it up, then leaves the stack to the ambient. This progress is often call on-gas time. When it is ready, the blast time is started. During the blast time, the cold blast is blown into the system in an opposite cycle, and is heated up by the check chamber. It then passes through the combustion chamber. Before blowing into the blast furnace, it is often mixed with cold blast to get the required and stable hot blast temperature. BFG is a type of process gas with a low calorific value. It is often mixed with COG to get a high heating value before entering into the combustion chamber. Traditionally the combustion air is used in the hot stove for the fuel gases combustion. -2- The Swedish and Finnish National Committees of the International Flame Research Foundation – IFRF Figure 1. The structure of hot stove – blast furnace system at the studied plant. 2.2 Hot stove model A spreadsheet-based blast furnace model has been developed at our research group [4]. The model is a static 1-dimensional heat and mass balance including three sub-models, i.e. the blast furnace, hot stove and burden calculation. The three sub-models are connected and balanced via iterative calculations. Figure 2. The schematic diagram of hot stove model. The hot stove model calculates fuel requirements for blast heating as well as maximum blast temperature with the schematic shown in Figure 2. As shown in Figure 2, the user can choose the heat exchanger (HEX) to heat up fuel gas and/or combustion air in the hot stove model. -3- The Swedish and Finnish National Committees of the International Flame Research Foundation – IFRF Recently the hot stove model has been further developed to include the oxygen enrichment. As shown in Figure 2, the enriched oxygen can be added either through the combustion air or the flue gas recirculated into the hot stove. This can be freely chosen in the model. The fuel gas requirements are calculated from blast furnace gas (imported from the blast furnace model) and coke oven gas, as well as hot stove operating data input listed in Table 1. The calculations can be constrained by hot stove flame temperature and minimum temperature difference between the flame temperature and required blast temperature. Additional adjustments for blast temperature increase with compression, heat losses, and hot stove change-over are also included. The flame temperature calculation is made iteratively according to Eq. (1). AFT ( Hi, fuel gas H air and /or oxygen Hcombustion Hj, flue gas recirculation ) Cp,kT FT (1) Where, AFT Adiabatic flame temperature, C Hi, sensible enthalpy of all gas of fuel gases (after heat exchanger fuel gas if heat exchanger is installed) H sensible enthalpy of air with oxygen if air is enriched with oxygen (after air and / or oxygen heat exchanger if heat exchanger is installed) H combustion enthalpy of combustion of fuel gases, e.g. BFG and / or COG) Hj, sensible enthalpy of gases of flue gas recirculated to hot stoves flue gas recirculation and / or oxygen sensible enthalpy of oxygen enriched Cp,kT FT heat capacity of all gases after combustion of fuel gases at flame temperature. The stove efficiency is an important parameter to evaluate the efficiency of a hot stove for hot blast production. The stove efficiency is defined as Eq. (2). This efficiency is often called “economic efficiency” for hot stoves. Energy in hot blast(GJ / hr) Stove efficiency, % 100 (2) Chemical energy in fuel gases(GJ / hr) -4- The Swedish and Finnish National Committees of the International Flame Research Foundation – IFRF Table 1. Input variables for hot stove model. Parameter Unit Notes Coke oven gas available On/off If off, hot stove must run on BFG gas only COG composition, temperature Flue gas temperature °C Fixed or calculated Heat losses GJ/h Fixed (& time based) Maximum flame temperature °C Fixed Maximum achievable blast Based on difference between hot stove flame temperature parameters temperature and achievable blast temperature Minimum O2 in flue gas % Fixed Compressor adiabatic % Affects cold blast temperature and compressor efficiency power consumption Air from atmosphere: Imported from BF model temperature, moisture BFG gas: composition, Imported from BF model moisture Flue gas recirculation only On/off If on, the oxygen is added into recirculated flue gas. Ratio of combustion air, Adjustable for each part for step-wise oxygen oxygen and flue gas enrichment and flue gas recirculation. 2.3 Oxygen enrichment vs. flue gas recirculation The conventional oxygen enrichment for the hot stove is to inject oxygen via the combustion air, as shown in Figure 2. The economic analysis on the hot stove oxygen- enriched combustion can be found in [5]. The oxygen enriched can be heated up together with the combustion air if the heat exchanger is installed. A new concept is to add oxygen into flue gas which recirculates back to the hot stove after combustion to replace the combustion air. By doing so, parts of sensible heat in the flue gas can be recovered. In addition, the heat exchanger can also be chosen for this new concept. The conventional oxygen enrichment combustion often leads to a high flame temperature or peak temperature. However, this could be better under the flue gas recirculation oxygen-enriched combustion. As shown in Figure 3, the patterns of flame temperature distributions for the flue gas recirculation oxygen enrichment combustion become more flat due to the dilute effect of the recirclualted flue gas.