Optimización del proceso de coquización a partir de la mezcla de materia prima: Caso Norte de Santander

Abstract

The Department of Norte de Santander is one of the main coal and coke producers in the country due to the qualities of the coals exploited in the region. The objective of this study is to propose an optimal coal mixture model that allows generating a good performance in the ovens and predicting the qualities of the coke to be produced, especially the ash, volatile matter and sulfur content in order to optimize the coke production costs from the raw material. The sample used comes from 25 coal mines located in Norte de Santander, distributed in three types of high volatile coal; type A, mainly from the municipality of El Zulia and Chucarima (Chitagá), type B, La Donjuana area (Bochalema) and type C, from the municipality of Sardinata. Three types of mixtures were developed and proximate analysis and free swelling index (FSI) were performed on each sample. As a finding, an optimization of 1.85% of the cost of the raw material in the coking process was obtained, concluding that the optimum mixture according to quality versus cost is the one that uses coals with the same proportion of type A and type B coal, a balanced percentage of type C and a low proportion of semi-anthracite, likewise, not only the optimization of costs but also of the high quality raw material “type A” was achieved, allowing the use of coals with low quality range.