The steady-state process simulator developed by Kiranoudis et al. has been used for the detailed simulation of the Bayer process flowsheet. It consists of the digestor/flash section as well as the precipitation and washing circuits. Advanced hydrometallurgical process models for the specific unit operations involved were developed and are appropriately described. The simulation studies mainly focus on studying the overall effects of certain design parameters on the entire plant efficiency. The overall performance of the bauxite digestion section is greatly and positively affected by the freesoda concentration of the feed liquor, the corresponding concentration of solid particles, and the operation temperature of the circuit. Precipitation of alumina in crystallizers is greatly affected by the corresponding soda concentration of the washing unit product stream, indicating the importance of this section. Furthermore, ambient temperature is important to the precipitation kinetics, influencing negatively the quantitative precipitation but resulting in particle populations of higher mean diameter.
Flowsheeting is an important engineering activity, arguably the most important, because it is the basis for analyzing process interactions within a specific flowsheet. An effective flowsheeting program can enhance the design procedure, and thus, improve the entire decision-making strategy. A number of requirements make the development of a flowsheeting system a complex task; useful and directed assistance requires a meaningful representation of process models to be kept in a computable form. The system should furthermore have the flexibility to provide support for exploration, evolution, cooperation, and integration. The described work addressed the preceding issues, and proposes solution for their achievement using a modular steady-state simulation tool (Process Integrated Simulator for Metallurgical Applications (PRISMA)) that is developed in order to model and simulate hydrometallurgical processes. A review of the simulator structure, along with its operation, is presented. Its development is based on object-oriented technology aspects appropriately analyzed and emphasized. User input to the simulator consists of flowsheet description, specification of the unit design variables and feed streams, as well as appropriate figures for the economic evaluation of the plant. The information introduced is passed to the simulator by means of an appropriate user interface developed in object-oriented code. Flowsheet computations are carried out by means of the execution part of the simulator.
The steady-state process simulator developed by Kiranoudis et al. has been used for the detailed simulation of sulfuric acid pressure leaching of laterite ores for the extraction of nickel and cobalt, and aqueous pressure oxidation of pyrites for the recovery of gold. Advanced hydrometallurgical process models for the specific unit operations involved were developed and are appropriately described. The simulation mainly focuses on studying the overall effects of certain design parameters on the entire plant efficiency. In the case of pyrites, the autothermal performance of the pressure autoclaves can be maintained by means of the oxidized recycle stream that greatly influences the fundamental heat balances of the reactor. Flashing the reactor pulp at the exit of the autoclaves results in further precipitation of solids related to ionic equilibrium reactions. The effect of grinding is important since most reactions are facilitated by small particle diameters. The ratio of feed pyrites influences the amount of precipitation of solids in the autoclave.
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