Modelling of the coke calcining kiln

Abstract

Modelling the rotary kilns used for the calcination of the coke is no simple undertaking, due to the manyinteracting physical phenomena governing the behavior of the solid bed and the freeboard gas. To date, a few attempts havebeen made, resulting in models that are either limited to a static global heat balance evaluation or affected by weaknessescaused by too many crude simplifying assumptions. As the main purpose is to control coke quality by controlling the calcination temperature and its rate ofincrease, the key issue is to control the temperature and location of the calcining zone, and in order to do so, it isimportant to introduce the effect of the many critical factors such as emissivities, volatiles and third air into the model. We have succeeded in doing so. Simulation results will be presented and discussed, clearly showing a possibility of optimizingthe operation of the kiln