Challenge Summary

Lack of a real time calcine Quality monitoring system has made it difficult to predict the feed rate of the furnace . The feed rate of the roaster plant is based on the test results of manual testing of calcine which is time consuming and also the results are less accurate leading to decline in the quality of zinc.

Challenge Scenario

Increasing efficiency is a necessary target for an industrial roaster nowadays. Efficiency improvement in the zinc roasting process is based on the process characterization, control design, implementation and testing. More measurements, analyses and calculated variables have been added to give more information on the state of the furnace.

During plant experiments and also during normal operation, calcine samples have been taken mainly from the furnace and microscopic analyses have been made manually. Only by doing this, you can get more information about growth mechanisms and what is actually going on in the furnace. In particular, analyzing samples under the microscope gives valuable information.

But this manual process is time consuming, less accurate and results in efficiency decline. Moreover the samples have been taken once in two hours which results in lack of real time data and analysis.

The solution must be an automated predictive solution which enables continuous automated calcine analysis helping the operators with real time analysis and insights. Based on the insights the operators will be able to fix the furnace feed rate instantly and which in turn increases the efficiency of the process resulting in elevated Zinc quality.