Pyrometallurgical Pilot Plants

Abstract

For understanding the.probability of a metallurgical process and to ascertain its economic feasibility, pyrometallurgical pilot plants have conntributed a great deal for the establishment of metallurgical industries. Extensive trials on large scale, as for example in industrial furnaces, arc very costly and difficult to organize. It is obvious that after the successful conclusion of investigations in laboratory scale, the process cannot be adapted in plant scale, as the gulf between the two is too wide to be bridged. The pilot plant, therefore, forms an intermediate step & if it is of proper dimensions, the experiences gained in its operation can be safely extrapolated to assess the process in commercial scale. It is possible to reduce to scale reasonably and still obtain fruitful results. The question often arises as to what will be correct size of an pilot plant. Generally the size of the experimental unit has been decided on the ability to handle the requisite raw materials, space available, equipments available for handling raw materials, avai- lability of water and rower, man power for its operation and chiefly the.funds available for its installation. A more appropriate selection of the size of an iron smelt-ing furnace for example, should be such as to be able to burn a proportionate amount of carbon per unit of hearth area per unit of time and the CO/CO2 ratio of the exit gas should be identical to the conventional blast furnace, It would also be desirable to have similar gas velocities in both the cases. It is obvious that the grain size of raw materials have to be appropriately reduced. The object of this brief paper is to review the contributions of a few Selected pyrometallurgical pilot plants for the development of new iron and steel making processes which havo since been adapted in modern industrial plants. The initial investigations, in the pilot plants have either made the domestic raw materials amenable for exploitation in industrial plants or have completely revolutionized the metallurgical process so as to make it more economical both for its installation and for its operation.