Oxy-fuel combustion and oxygen enrichment for metal melting

BOOSTAL™ Oxy-fuel for non-ferrous metals

Are you a non-ferrous primary smelter, foundry, secondary smelter and refining professional looking to reduce air emissions, reduce your carbon footprint and/or increase your productivity?

Metals that are sometimes recycled and have varying levels of volatile organic compound (VOC) contamination are often melted in reverberatory furnaces and rotary kilns equipped with regenerative burners to reduce energy consumption by preheating combustion air. The combustion of air generates atmospheric emissions that will not allow the environmental objective of carbon neutrality to be reached in 2050.

We propose an oxy-combustion technology that consists of injecting pure oxygen instead of air into the raw material to be melted . Oxyfuel burners improve heat transfer efficiency, which speeds up melting and increases productivity.
In the absence of nitrogen, the volume of combustion oxygen is less than that of the combustion air. This reduces the amount of energy needed and consequently the NOx and CO2 emissions.
BoostAL™ for non-ferrous metals offers you a suitable and environmentally responsible alternative to regenerative air burners.

Environmental benefits

• Up to 90% reduction in NOx emissions.
• Up to 50% reduction in CO2 emissions
• Up to 50% fuel savings.

Operational benefits

• Up to 50% increase in productivity.
• Reduced capital expenditures for flue gas treatment with a 5-fold reduction in volume to be treated.
• Higher yield of recycled metals.

BoostAL™ for melting iron in cupola furnaces - Foundry industry

Cupola furnaces are vertical furnaces designed to produce all grades of gray and ductile iron. Air is injected from below to burn the solid coke, which in turn transfers the heat to the metal charge.

However, being a thermal ballast, the nitrogen in the air limits the combustion temperature to 900°C and the performance of the dome. This limits the productivity rate, the melting temperature and restricts the scrap supply.

To overcome these limitations, the use of pure oxygen increases the temperature of the flame to 1,500 °C, which allows a greater transfer of energy for the fusion of the metal.

We offer a wide range of oxy-fuel technologies for different levels of oxygen enrichment combining lances and dome oxygen injection.

With BoostAL™ to melt iron in cupola furnaces, three ways are possible:

• Oxygen enrichment of the combustion air that modifies the thermal gradient in the combustion zone, increasing the maximum temperature. It is used for the low oxygen enrichment (2%) of the combustion air, in all dome sizes.
• Injection of oxygen through lances in the combustion zone of coke with enrichment indexes higher than 2%; the oxygen is injected directly into the cupola and allows a better penetration of oxygen in the center of the cupola and a better distribution of it.
• Oxygen injection by means of supersonic lances for hot air domes for the penetration of oxygen in the center of the dome thanks to an injection speed twice as high (momentary force of oxygen=230N) than the previous one.

Environmental benefits

• Coke reduction: up to 5-10% kg of coke/tonne of iron

Operational advantages:

• Productivity increase up to 7% at 1% for every % oxygen enrichment
• Casting temperature increase up to 10°C to +15°C per % oxygen enrichment
• Increased operating range up to +30% to +50% of nominal output at 3% oxygen enrichment.
• Increased metal yield