Coke is a strategically important product

Coke is a solid fuel of artificialorigin, which is used primarily at blast-furnace plants for smelting pig iron. It is also used in the chemical, foundry and non-ferrous metallurgy industries. This combustible material can be oil, pitch, electrode or coal, depending on the raw materials from which it is produced. Most of all coke is produced from coal.

Coke is a product that is produced whenheating the source material to temperatures close to a thousand degrees without access to air. As a result of chemical and physical processes at the output of a product is obtained, which contains more than 96 percent carbon. Also may be present in the coke ash, sulfur, phosphorus and other substances, the amount of which, however, should not be high since it can affect, for example, on the quality of steel produced using this fuel. Such a composition allows coke allocate about 7000 kcal by combustion of one kilogram of matter.

Coke is a raw material that is used, including,in the production of electrodes. For this, the material is obtained by treating coal tar pitch (electrode coke) or oil distillates (petroleum coke). The latter variants differ from Carboniferous in that they contain a very low content of additional components (ash content from 0.3 to 0.8%).

The production of coke includes several main stages, among which:

- Selection of grades of coal (gas, fatty, and coke coals can be used in different proportions);

- mixing and crushing to form a charge;

- screening, dressing, compaction, dosing, drying;

- placement in the furnace, followed by equalization of the coke pusher bar;

- direct coking process (aboutfourteen and a half hours), as a result of which the coals are sintered, and most of the excess substances (ammonia, tar, hydrogen, benzene hydrocarbons, etc.) are removed from them;

- pushing the finished product into the car;

- Cooling coke with water in the tower of extinguishing by abundant spillage;

- the final sorting of the product in classes from 0-10 to more than 60 millimeters.

Coke, whose photo is presented above,is a substance of gray color, if it is produced from coal raw materials. If used in the initial stages of oil or pitch, the shades of the final product of the coking process may be somewhat different.

Coke is a strategic product that mustconstantly supplied to the metallurgical plants. This is due to the technological processes in the blast furnaces, which work without stopping. If the blast furnace stops for more than ten hours, the metal inside freezes, and it can not be extracted without destroying the design of the furnace itself. For the same reason, coking plants are dependent on coal supplies, because The furnaces are designed for non-stop work for a quarter of a century (20-25 years). Stopping coke production leads to the formation of frozen slags in the furnace chamber, which are extremely difficult to remove from there.