Blast Furnace Ironmaking: Analysis, Control, and Optimization

Blast Furnace Ironmaking: Analysis, Control, and Optimization uses a fundamental first principles approach to prepare a blast furnace mass and energy balance in ExcelT. Robust descriptions of the main equipment and systems, process technologies, and best practices used in a modern blast furnace plant are detailed. Optimization tools are provided to help the reader find the best blast furnace fuel mix and related costs, maximize output, or evaluate other operational strategies using the ExcelT model that the reader will develop.

The first principles blast furnace ExcelT model allows for more comprehensive process assessments than the 'rules of thumb' currently used by the industry. This book is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate science and engineering students in the fields of chemical, mechanical, metallurgical and materials engineering. Additionally, steel company engineers, process technologists, and management will find this book useful with its fundamental approach, best practices description, and perspective on the future.

Mr. Ian Cameron is the principal metallurgist, Ferrous for the Pyrometallurgy Sector Practice at Hatch Ltd., Ontario, Canada. He services a global clientele, solving technical and business challenges throughout the iron and steel value chain starting from the main raw materials. Ian has more than 35 years of experience including 20+ years as a consulting engineer for Hatch and previously Corus Consulting/Hoogovens Technical Services. He brings extensive experience in process technology, blast furnace operations, technology transfer, commissioning and training to his steel industry clients. This includes forecasting future raw material usage patterns for major mining houses, developing new blast furnace related technologies, designing new steelworks and solving acute operational problems including plant emergencies. Ian holds Bachelor and Master’s Degrees in Metallurgical Engineering from McGill University, Montreal, Canada and is a licensed Professional Engineer in Ontario, Canada.

Dr. Mitren Sukhram is a senior process engineer in the Pyrometallurgy Sector Practice at Hatch Ltd. He works on all aspects of blast furnace ironmaking including reline planning, techno-economic assessments, campaign life assessment/extension, and operational support for blast furnaces located around the world. More recently, Mitren has focused on developing innovative technologies to improve blast furnace productivity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mitren is a graduate from the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada where he completed Bachelor, Master’s and PhD degrees in Material Science and Engineering. In his PhD studies, Mitren developed a novel sensor that measured velocity patterns in liquid metals. His areas of expertise include thermodynamics, heat, mass, and momentum transfer in pyrometallurgical processes. Mitren is a licensed Professional Engineer in Ontario, Canada.

Kyle Lefebvre is a process engineer in the Pyrometallurgy practice at Hatch Ltd. His work includes process modelling and logistical simulations in the iron and steel industry. Kyle has worked on new steel works design, and he has assessed of a wide range of processes in the iron and steelmaking value chain. Kyle has visited several blast furnaces in North America to perform furnace inspections and to improve plant operations. Kyle holds a Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Applied Science and Chemical Engineering from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. Kyle is a licensed professional engineer in Ontario, Canada.

William George Davenport is a graduate of the University of British Columbia and the Royal School of Mines, London. Prior to his academic career he worked with the Linde Division of Union Carbide in Tonawanda, New York. He spent a combined 43 years of teaching at McGill University and the University of Arizona. His Union Carbide days are recounted in the book Iron Blast Furnace, Analysis, Control and Optimization (English, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Spanish editions). During the early years of his academic career, he spent his summers working in many of Noranda Mines Company’s metallurgical plants, which led quickly to the book Extractive Metallurgy of Copper. This book has gone into five English language editions (with several printings) and Chinese, Farsi, and Spanish language editions. He also had the good fortune to work in Phelps Dodge’s Playas flash smelter soon after coming to the University of Arizona. This experience contributed to the book Flash Smelting, with two English language editions and a Russian language edition and eventually to the book Sulfuric Acid Manufacture (2006), 2nd edition 2013. In 2013 he co-authored Extractive Metallurgy of Nickel, Cobalt, and Platinum Group Metals, which took him to all the continents except Antarctica. He and four co-authors worked on Rare Earths: Science, Technology, Production and Use, which took him around the United States, Canada, and France, visiting rare earth mines, smelters, manufacturing plants, laboratories, and recycling facilities. Professor Davenport’s teaching has centred on ferrous and non-ferrous extractive metallurgy. He has visited (and continues to visit) about 10 metallurgical plants per year around the world to determine the relationships between theory and industrial practice. He has also taught plant design and economics throughout his career and has found this aspect of his work particularly rewarding. The delight of his life at the university has, however, always been academic advising of students on a one-on-one basis. Professor Davenport is a Fellow (and life member) of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum and a twenty-five-year member of the (U.S.) Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration. He is recipient of the CIM Alcan Award, the TMS Extractive Metallurgy Lecture Award, the AusIMM Sir George Fisher Award, the AIME Mineral Industry Education Award, the American Mining Hall of Fame Medal of Merit, and the SME Milton E. Wadsworth award. In September 2014 he will be honored by the Conference of Metallurgists’ Bill Davenport Honorary Symposium in Vancouver, British Columbia (his hometown).