Authors: S. Hay, Frank Porretta, Brian Wiggins
5th International Copper Conference, Pyrometallurgy of Copper, Santiago, Chile, November 2003
Abstract
The Port Kembla Copper (PKC) smelter was experiencing problems with the acid plant tail gas plume coming to ground earlier than predicted by dispersion modelling. It was necessary to curtail plant operation during adverse meteorological conditions in order to avoid exceeding the ground level SO2 license conditions. A once through caustic scrubber was selected to treat the acid plant tail gas. The scrubber has virtually eliminated down-time imposed by environmental restrictions providing a good return on investment, and avoided costly modifications to the acid plant. This paper discusses the selection, design and start up of the custom designed tail gas scrubber. The design of a novel gas reheater, using computational fluid dynamic modeling (CFD), to avoid sulphuric acid condensation is described. Choosing an appropriate SO2 scrubber for metallurgical applications, from the several available commercialized methods is a complex issue that is demystified in this paper.
