Method of integrating a blast furnace with an air gas separation unit
AssigneeL'Air Liquide, Societe Anonyme pour l'Etude et l'Exploitation des Procedes Georges Claude
InventorsMichel Devaux, Richard Dubettier-Grenier
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Abstract
The invention relates to a method of integrating a plurality of blast furnaces with a plurality of air gas separation units, in which the replacement blower available on the blast furnace site is used to feed compressed air into an air gas separation unit making it possible to enrich the blast-furnace blast with oxygen, this unit being stopped when one of the blowers of the blast furnaces has to be replaced with the blower used by the air gas separation unit.
Claims17
A method of integrating n(≧1) blast furnaces with at least one air gas separation unit, comprising the steps of:
- feeding air with at least n+1 compressors to n blast furnaces and to an air gas separation unit producing oxygen with an oxygen purity of greater than 90 vol %, the air being fed to said air gas separation unit being fed at a pressure of at least about 5×105 kPa, each of said blast furnaces being fed by at least one compressor from said at least n+1 compressors, at least one of said at least n+1 compressors does not feed a blast furnace but instead is used to feed the air to said gas separation unit;
- as soon as one of said at least n+1 compressors that is feeding air to said n blast furnaces is producing air at a flow rate below a predetermined flow rate Dmin, it is disconnected from a respective one of said blast furnaces and the compressor that is feeding air to said gas separation unit is connected to said blast furnace.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.