Modeling of a concentration plant to improve the carbon content control of iron oxide pellets

The objective of the paper is the development and evaluation of a control strategy to improve coke addition in a concentration plant for the production of iron oxide pellets. Reducing the variability of carbon content could lead to significant improvements in terms of higher product quality, reduced energy consumption, and process stability. Phenomenological and empirical models are developed to track material composition through the circuit. These models are first used to determine the achievable variability reduction of the final carbon content. Then, two different control strategies are developed and evaluated in simulation. The first consists in a PI controller and the second relies on model predictive control. Results show that both strategies are able to reduce the carbon content variability and produce improvements. Alternatives to obtain more significant variance reduction are proposed.