Booster Bearing Failure Reduction Through a Novel Thermodynamic Analysis

The gas booster station of a steel works has experienced excessive bearing failures since commissioning over two decades ago. This station was designed with redundancy, allowing for automatic switch-over between two gas booster fans. Bearing failures were observed, on average once every 15.7 days, with instances where both fans experienced simultaneous downtime. Booster failures resulted in regular station downtime, preventing Coke Oven Gas (COG) transport to an end user. This flammable by-product is used as a heat source and all unutilized volumes are flared, resulting in energy wastages. Furthermore, the absence of COG increases Natural Gas (NG) usage, procured at a cost. Traditional root cause analysis techniques failed to identify the cause of these excessive bearing failures. However, multiple in-depth data analysis studies resulted in a thermodynamic investigation, exposing liquid and solid particles within the COG to be responsible for the failures. This allowed for the design of an in-line particle collector, eliminating excessive failures. Following the particle collector installation, only two strategic bearing changes took place over the next 41 weeks, with reduced bearing vibration levels compared to before. The station experienced no failure downtime during this period, resulting in reduced COG flaring and thus improved energy utilization.

CO2 Reforming of CH4 Using Coke Oven Gas over Ni/MgO-Al2O3 Catalysts: Effect of the MgO:Al2O3 Ratio

Research is being actively conducted to improve the carbon deposition and sintering resistance of Ni-based catalysts. Among them, the Al2O3-supported Ni catalyst has been broadly studied for the dry reforming reaction due to its high CH4 activity at the beginning of the reaction. However, there is a problem of deactivation due to carbon deposition of Ni/Al2O3 catalyst and sintering of Ni, which is a catalytically active material. Supplementing MgO in Ni/Al2O3 catalyst can result in an improved MgAl2O4 spinel structure and basicity, which can be helpful for the activation of methane and carbon dioxide molecules. In order to confirm the optimal supports’ ratio in Ni/MgO-Al2O3 catalysts, the catalysts were prepared by supporting Ni after controlling the MgO:Al2O3 ratio stepwise, and the prepared catalysts were used for CO2 reforming of CH4 (CDR) using coke oven gas (COG). The catalytic reaction was conducted at 800 °C and at a high gas hourly space velocity (GHSV = 1,500,000 h−1) to screen the catalytic performance. The Ni/MgO-Al2O3 (MgO:Al2O3 = 3:7) catalyst showed the best catalytic performance between prepared catalysts. From this study, the ratio of MgO:Al2O3 was confirmed to affect not only the basicity of the catalyst but also the dispersion of the catalyst and the reducing property of the catalyst surface.

Behavior of the fireclay lining of a coke oven gas cupola when melting cast iron using anode breakage in electrolysis production. Part 1

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