Methods for manufacturing high heat flux regime coolers

A method of manufacturing a furnace cooler for an estimated in-service high level heat flux greater than 25 kW/m2 average, and dimensionally formed and finished in a copper casting with a shape suitable for service as a launder, a runner, a cooler, a wall cooler, a roof cooler, a burner block, a tuyere, a casting mold, an electrode clamp, a tap cooler, or a stave cooler in a pyrometallurgical furnace for the production of at least one of molten metal, metal alloy, matte, or slag, and comprising:

• patterning a sand casting mold with a three dimensional pattern for a furnace cooler with a shape suitable for service as a launder, a runner, a cooler, a wall cooler, a roof cooler, a burner block, a tuyere, a casting mold, an electrode clamp, a tap cooler, or a stave cooler in a pyrometallurgical furnace for the production of at least one of molten metal, metal alloy, matte, or slag;
• placing inside the sand casting mold a pipe coil comprising a UNS C70600 90%, C71300 75%, C71500 70%, C71640 66%, or UNS C70600 Schedule-40 water pipe or equivalent;
• securing the pipe coil inside the sand casting mold with a mechanical device to prevent any movement during a subsequent molten copper pour of the pipe coils away from an optimum position determined from thermal and stress computer modelling of an end-of-campaign life state;
• pouring into the mold and flooding around the pipe coil a liquefied molten high purity (99%-Wt) copper and de-oxidized during the casting process to produce a high-purity copper casting approximating UNS-type C11000;
• cooling a resulting casting, removing it from the mold, and machining and otherwise finishing it and testing for its service as a cooler by an end user;
• wherein, a resulting internal separation of the pipe coil at substantially every and all points of its outer surfaces to any cold face exceeds 5/16″ after the casting process is complete.

A Method, comprising:

• a step for casting copper-nickel (CuNi) alloy coolant pipe coils positioned inside a solidified copper casting of a block cooler that are in opposition to and internally separated a predetermined minimum distance “d” from a hot face;
• a step for computation fluid dynamics (CFD) and/or finite element analysis (FEA) computer modelling that fixes the predetermined minimum distance within a range of 1.10″ to 1.50″ in which the CuNi alloy coolant pipe coils must be set from a hot face once solidified within the copper casting;
• wherein, a front copper cover includes substantially all of the copper casting that solidified between the CuNi alloy coolant pipe coils and the hot face, and such thereafter has the necessary thermal conductivity to uniformly spread heat flows from the hot face into each of the CuNi alloy coolant pipe coils;
• a step for taking the heat from a contact with the copper casting while still a hot liquid to elevate the temperature at a fused interface with the CuNi alloy coolant pipe coils, wherein metallurgical bonding resulted from such contact without any melt-through of a pipe wall;
• and
• a step for eliminating vibrations within the copper casting just as it is solidifying.