Assessment of the reduced ore cooling process at the Ernesto Che Guevara Plant

The analysis of the investigations related to evaluations on the process of reduced ore cooling in rotating horizontal cylinders on an industrial scale indicated that there are only water temperature measurements on one end of pit and showed no experiments where the variables of water and ore flowrates were evaluated nor the relation with the temperature of the ore at the cooler outlet. Based on this precedent, six thermocouples were installed to calculate the cooling water temperature in three locations on both sides of the pit connected to the data input system in place in the enterprise. The design of the experiment was developed from analyzing a population of data from a 6/month period. The results showed that the variable of greater impact on the ore temperature at the cot oler outlet is the water flowrate. For lower water flowrates (15m3/h) heat transfer by water evaporation to the air is predominant and for higher water flowrates (25m3/h) heat transfer by convection is predominant. Also, it was possible to know that the cooler heat output reaches the highest values (86%) with the lowest ore and water flowrates (15m3/h and 29t/h, respectively).