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High-temperature preheaters for pitch with higher melting point

Köllemann GmbH from Germany, a well-established supplier of coke preheaters for
the global primary aluminium industry, is sponding to the more stringent demands that
are expected to be imposed on the production of anodes in future. New environmental guidelines for the use of pitch in this field will mean it will no longer be possible to use the standard pitch currently used. Over the last two years, the company has therefore developed special machinery to allow pitch with a significantly higher melting point to be processed safely and reliably.

Preheaters currently use thermal oil as the heat source, and this flows through the screw flights, the housing and the main shaft it is capable of reaching temperatures of 300-350 °C. The new development offers a high-temperature preheating screw. Heat generation is via electrically heated pipes inside the shaft that are capable of supplying approximately 300 kW per screw shaft. Temperatures up to 450 °C are possible.
To improve overall efficiency, the new approach uses existing Köllemann preheaters as before to achieve temperatures of 180-220 °C together with a downstream high-temperature preheater that provides the extra boost needed to achieve temperature required for the new types of pitch. Like Köllemann’s existing equipment there are no moving parts inside the screw shafts: the energy is distributed to the shaft from the outside via a special contact-ring system. One benefit of the new system is that it is
possible to upgrade existing plants at minmum cost by installing the high-temperature
screw between the existing preheater and the extruder.The new preheater is still under development. Köllemann is interested in collaborating with potential customers to bring the system to market readiness. Contact details along with further information about the company and its products can be found at our website

Author

Matthias Ginster is head of the project department at Köllemann GmbH in Adenau, Germany-
A detailed report on Köllemann was published in ALUMINIUM 9/2013, pp. 56-58