Reducing emissions, energy and water consumption.
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Case Study 4: Smelting emissions reduction
Context
Coke was one of our Australian smelting client’s
largest consumable spend items and a major source of carbon
emissions. The site was locked into a 4 year contract with
the supplier.
Approach
PIP developed a mass balance to identify where coke was consumed
in the process – starting back at the coke supplier
and ending in the furnace. This involved setting up controls
and measurement points, tracing “missing” coke
throughout the system until a robust mass balance was in place
as an ongoing information and control tool. This tool led
to a number of improvements throughout the system.
After much work, we found that the supplier of coke was weighing
delivery-haul vehicles very shortly after a standard water-quench
process, and the client was being invoiced based on gross
weight which included residual quench water. In other words,
our client was paying for water at the same rate as coke.
Worse, contracted road-haul delivery drivers were also paid
on tonnages across the weighbridge, so they often re-quenched
their coke just prior to arrival at the client site.
In order to manage supplier and driver behavior, moisture
sampling on arrival was initiated for every inbound truck
to determine a dry weight for each coke load, and existing
moisture specification clauses in the client’s supply
contracts were used to ensure that the furnace burnt coke
– not water. Once the supplier and drivers “got
the message” a standard more reasonable moisture content
assumption was applied.
The team also implemented a variety of ideas to change procedures
which further improved the efficiency of coke use in the furnace.
Context
The combined PIP/client team was able to reduce the organisation’s
carbon emissions, and cut coke spend by more than 10% - a
significant result for a commodity that was considered incompressible
by the client when PIP arrived on site.
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