| FLOGEN CONTOP – AN INTEGRATED DESIGN, DECISION-MAKING, CONTROL, OPTIMIZATION AND AUTOMATION SYSTEM FOR PIERCE SMITH CONVERTERS COUPLED WITH RAW MATERIALS MANAGEMENT Florian Kongoli1; Marcos De Souza2; 1FLOGEN TECHNOLOGIES, Mont-Royal, Canada; 2FLOGEN TECHNOLOGIES INC, Sao Paulo, Brazil; PAPER: 551/Nonferrous/Regular (Oral) SCHEDULED: 14:25/Tue. 29 Nov. 2022/Arcadia 2 ABSTRACT: FLOGEN Technologies Inc. has developed an integrated Design/Decision-Making/Control/Optimization/Automation System for Pierce Smith Converters (offline and on-line) that combines several needs on supply side (in origin and from previous reactors), on production side, on metal sales side and on financial side. It supports cost prediction and cost follow up on the energy and consumables side and is integrated with databases that manages numerous types of essays. The system instantaneously makes a complete optimization of all raw materials, including limestone, silica, enriched air volumes etc, to achieve specific targets according to the needs of the company. The results indicate the possibility to decrease the amount of silica used as a flux, minimize the slag and copper blowing time, maximize the use of reverts, minimize slag volume, and decrease copper losses in the slag. The system finds the optimum of the charge among various scenarios while the main process parameters (such as bath temperature, sulfur content in the blister and copper in the slag) are calculated during the operation, providing a clearer overview of the process, and supporting the determination of slag and copper blowing end point. The presentation will describe some of these achievements. CONTOP system was also successfully used to determine the annual procurement strategies by predicting various raw material cost-based scenarios related to productivity and fuel consumption in short- and long-term future. CONTOP increased productivity and reduced cost up to the highest designed limit of the technology. CONTOP also changed the way of operating from a reactive wait-the-lab-results-approach to a proactive forecast-and-act approach. |
