No. UDA-POIG.01.03.02-14-025/10-00, Project title:” Patent protection in the field of metallurgical raw materials testing equipment” carried out under the Innovative Economy Operational Program, 2007-2013,Priority axis 1. Research and development of modern technologies Action 1.3 Support for R&D projects for entrepreneurs carried out by scientific units Sub-action 1.3.2 Support for protection of industrial property created in scientific units as a result of R&D work.
Project Manager :
Patent Attorney: Barbara Adamowicz
tel: + 48 22 818 88 30
Purpose of the project
The purpose of the project is to analyze the state of the art, conduct patent research and develop invention applications concerning new equipment for testing metallurgical raw materials, especially iron ore and coke, and to subsidize the costs associated with obtaining patent protection at home and abroad. Implementation of the project will contribute to the development of the Polish economy under the strategic objective of the OPIE in terms of the first priority axis “Research and development of modern technologies”. The inventions envisaged, within the framework of the project, are a synthesis of solutions to many scientific problems, in particular:
- construction of high-temperature furnaces
- ways to control the temperature of objects with variable thermal dynamics
- Safety of operating high-temperature equipment in the presence of toxic and explosive gases
- issues of highly accurate weighing of large masses under varying conditions of temperature, vibration, etc.
- automatic transport of high temperature objects
- gas distribution and gas supply systems to the retort in a way that does not affect the process of continuous weighing of the retort during the test.
Opis projektu
The project concerns patent protection for new devices for testing metallurgical raw materials, in particular for testing the quality of solid fuels – coal and coke, and for testing the physical and chemical parameters of iron ore. These devices are desired both by producers of raw materials – coal and iron ore, by coking plants producing coke from coal mixtures with the addition of increasingly common alternative fuels, and by end users – ironworks. Knowledge of the parameters of the raw materials used is essential in order to obtain data for the optimal technological processes; obtaining coke in a coke oven battery and smelting iron in a blast furnace. Both the production of coke in coke batteries and the conduct of iron smelting in the blast furnace are processes that consume very large amounts of energy and raw materials. Manufacturers use their own or imported raw materials. Differences of several percent between test results – and the actual parameters of raw materials – translate into multi-million dollar benefits or losses. Testing of the parameters of coal, coke and ores is defined by many ISO standards. Constructing equipment that works in accordance with all the requirements of the standards is technically difficult. In the current state of the economy, these devices either do not exist or do not operate fully with the requirements of the standards. The results obtained are therefore subject to errors and do not maintain repeatability, making them of low utility. Currently, in the energy industry, where there is a high diversification of raw material suppliers, sharp and changing market requirements , rising prices of raw materials and energy and the introduction of alternative fuels, any error during the conduct, technological process on a coke battery or in a blast furnace, arising from poorly understood parameters of raw materials has serious consequences. These are energy losses, increased pollution, variable quality of the resulting products: coke or pig iron. ITR has specialized for many years in the manufacture of high-temperature apparatus for testing solid fuels. The apparatus for testing the quality of coke produced, the so-called CRI/CSR determination, has been a great success. Many copies of this apparatus work in coking plants and scientific institutes (Poland, Algeria, Bosnia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia,W. UK, Russia). The apparatus, which was filed for a patent in 2006, receives the highest feedback from users. Encouraged by this success and having a staff of engineers of the young generation, we decided to expand the range of our devices with designs that are even more difficult and thus even more useful to the economy. The basic problem of coke battery technologists is to produce coke with the expected parameters. The coke battery is a large facility operating in continuous operation. There is no room there for experiments to see what kind of coke will be obtained by using different coal mixtures. Experimenting on the battery is also dangerous in that too much coal expansion pressure can be generated during the process , which can permanently damage the objectives of the coking battery. The process is therefore carried out with qualified raw material suppliers. The problem begins when a different coal supplier is used for production or when the parameters of the resulting coke need to be changed. Taking the above into account, it is necessary to use a coke battery pilot – a device that can quickly and without risk produce and test a sample of the mixture, and on this basis determine whether the coke obtained from this mixture will meet expectations. Such pilots are occasionally used in some foreign coking plants, but as an older-generation device, they are very large, consuming 200 kg to 500 kg of mixture, being gas-heated and occupying a cubic capacity of several hundred cubic meters, and the process of sample preparation, test, cooling and discharge takes several days. To solve this problem, ITR has developed a concept for a laboratory device requiring a sample of only 5 kg, in which the modeled coking process takes 3 hours. The coke parameters obtained in this pilot are sufficiently equivalent to those obtained on the battery. The device will be automatic, the operator only has to prepare the 5 kg sample and place it in the retort and the remaining operations – transport, heating and cooling of the heavy retort are carried out automatically with full tightness of the system discharging toxic and explosive coke oven gases to the disposal device. Another invention carried out within the framework of the project concerns a device for testing the reducibility of iron ores. The quality of the resulting pig iron depends on the skillful conduct of the smelting process in the furnace, operating in continuous mode. The most important parameter for the ore is the degree of reducibility of pure iron from iron oxides and its plasticity (softening at the temperature occurring in the furnace). Similarly, there are a number of ISO standards here that define the scope of ore testing, but there is no domestic equipment, and equipment offered by foreign companies does not meet all the requirements of the standards. The test involves modeling the conditions in a blast furnace. A small sample (500g) is placed in a heavy heat-resistant retort and the retort is placed in a high-temperature furnace and reducing atmospheres of different compositions are passed through it. The problem with this test is weighing the retort. The standard requires that the rate of weight loss of the sample be recorded to the nearest gram, which, with a retort of more than 20 kilograms placed in a hot furnace and having gases fed in with a relatively high flow rate, is a very difficult technical task. A concept has been developed for a device that weighs the retort with a better accuracy than the standards require, with many accompanying technical issues resolved; temperature compensation, stability of the balance in the face of shocks, the way the gases are supplied, the way the retort is manipulated (since it will also be an automatic device), the way the reducing atmosphere, consisting of toxic and explosive gases, is controlled. In addition, the Institute sees the need to develop a device for testing the plasticity of ores and a model device for determining the expansion pressure of coal, which is the most important research device that has not yet existed in the world. In the future – on the model of the already constructed pilot for the coke battery, we intend to develop a pilot for the blast furnace, which – working, like the blast furnace, in a continuous cycle – will model the operation of the furnace and check the quality of the resulting melt for different coke/ore compositions. Since the prevailing temperature in the blast furnace cannot be obtained by using known high-temperature materials, a ceramic model with induction heating will be used. The process of induction heating is unstable , and in addition, in the case of heating an object with an input that dynamically changes its parameters, this will be another technically difficult task.
Justification of the project
The innovative value of the project, which involves the protection of four inventions and results from the use of unique designs that make up the new equipment and the development of ways to model the operation of a large coke oven battery in the development of new technologies (addition of alternative fuels) for the production of coke and the study of its quality parameters. In the field of iron ore testing, the new equipment, by studying the physical and chemical parameters of the ore, contributes to the optimization of the iron smelting process in the blast furnace. The equipment will also feature high accuracy and repeatability of results, as well as new solutions for operating safety. When applied to the national economy, the devices will contribute to economic growth and scientific excellence. Many well-known companies and research institutes, domestic and foreign, are keenly interested in cooperating with our Institute by exchanging experience and comparing inter-laboratory research. In addition, due to the very wide range of research carried out in the metallurgical industry, foreign companies are also interested in developing further new equipment in cooperation with our Institute. The scientific level of the project is very high due to the unique solutions to the above problems. Achieving the goal for normative devices requires solving a number of sub-problems, which, when put together into a single apparatus, produce the required effect, while non-normative devices (such as the blast furnace pilot) require developing a new concept and solving a number of even more difficult sub-problems. These include the issues of how to regulate high temperature with high accuracy, continuous weighing of heavy and hot objects with high accuracy, design of test retorts, design of electric furnaces, automatic systems for transporting and cooling the hot retort, systems for creating and supplying the reaction atmosphere created from toxic gas mixtures, systems for disposing of post-reaction gases, manipulation of the retort for loading and unloading the sample, as well as data processing systems and equipment control systems – including remote monitoring systems. The project is in line with the economic and social requirements of the assumptions of the Energy Policy of Poland until 2025 in the economic and social aspect, concerning technical solutions resulting in a reduction in the cost of energy production, improvement of quality and minimization of losses and failures resulting from insufficient research level of parameters of metallurgical raw materials. In addition, these solutions will result in an increase in the level of safety and comfort of operation – as automatic equipment and very carefully draped with safety systems, since due to the requirements of testing, the operation is exposed to high temperatures and toxic and explosive gases. We anticipate filing for patenting four inventions under the project, including the most important ones (coke battery pilot and iron ore parameter testing device) already in the first stage. Next year, we intend to apply for patents for the pilot coke battery in more than a dozen countries that count in the steel industry – the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, France, Belgium, England, Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Ukraine, as well as Russia and Kazakhstan, Algeria,Bosnia.