Abstract
In the last 40 years, stationary calciners have permanently replaced rotary kilns in existing alumina refineries and are being installed in all new Greenfield alumina refineries producing smelter grade alumina.
In the 1960’s two separate and different approaches to stationary alumina calciners were going through research and development. Alcoa developed a fluid flash system and VAW, together with Lurgi (today Outotec) the Circulating Fluid Bed (CFB) calciner. Both developments had the same targets, but took different approaches to create more efficient calcination systems. Without any joint effort, the industrial stages of both developments were introduced to the industry at the same time.
This paper describes the significant steps of the development that both calcination systems went through to reach an industrial stage and the risks and failures that both took. Furthermore the differences and common goals of both approaches are analyzed and described.
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References
Fish, W. M., “Alumina Calcination in the Fluid-Flash Calciner,” Presented at 103rd AIME Annual Meeting-February 1974, Dallas; Published in Light Metals 1974.
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© 2012 TMS (The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society)
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Williams, F., Schmidt, HW. (2012). Flash- and CFB Calciners, History and Difficulties of Development of Two Calcination Technologies. In: Suarez, C.E. (eds) Light Metals 2012. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48179-1_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48179-1_24
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48570-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48179-1
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