Currently, over 70% of the world’s steel production is based on pig iron smelted in blast furnaces. Steel is used, among others in the automotive industry, construction and building industry and for the production of modern wind turbines. Coke is an integral component of the blast furnace charge and therefore plays an important role in the integrated steel production process. The production of coke with the required quality parameters requires the use of a high proportion of the highest quality coking coals (hard / hard premium coking coals), which significantly affects the unit production costs. About 75% of these costs are primarily the costs of preparing the coal mixture.

The general scheme of a top-charged (a) and stamp-charged coke oven battery (b) (adapted from [21]): (1) coal tower; (2) quenching tower; (3) cross-section of the ceramic massif of the coke oven battery; (4) charging car; (5) SCP car (stamping?charging?pushing); (6) stamped coal cake; (7) gravity-charged coal; (8) pushing car; and (9) roof car.

The production of high-quality coke requires the use of coking coals with the best properties – scarce resources on the global market. Coke producers from EU countries are also struggling with the problem of coking coal deficit, using the import of this raw material from countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia, Russia and Mozambique. As a result, bearing in mind the strategic importance of this raw material for the development of the European economy, coking coal was included in the list of 30 critical raw materials (you can read more about it here: http://www.itpe.pl/blog/2020/09/10 / updated-critical-raw-materials-list /). For many years, the Institute for Chemical Processing of Coal has been conducting research work on increasing the efficiency of the coke production process and optimizing coal blends recipes, including use of coals characterized by worse coking properties – gas-coking coals (semi-soft).

Read more about aforementioned issue in the scientific article of the Institute’s employees, which was published in the Energies journal (MDPI): https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/12/3401

 

Author: Michał Rejdak
Department of Cokemaking Technologies
mrejdak@itpe.pl  |  tel.: 4832 621 63 58