from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Through the rising amount of hydrogen in natural gases provided by the suppliers technical questions about the process control based on the off-gas composition as well as about the supply of the necessary process heat come up. But also the hydrogen solubility plays a significant role in many processes in which solid or liquid metals like copper are produced. This research aims to provide answers to these questions. The changed off-gas composition of the hydrogen enriched natural gas when combusting in a shaft smelting furnace calculated in this study as well as the changed heat output. As it is important that during the combustion the necessary process heat for the melting of the copper cathodes can be provided or if an additional heat source or a higher volume of input gas is needed. For the modelling of the gas combustion special attention is paid to the components oxygen and carbon monoxide as well as the in the gas atmosphere remaining hydrogen. Based on that to be expected hydrogen solubility in different copper qualities is modelled in a thermodynamically software solution. The results are compared to other studies which aimed for the hydrogen solubility with a specific look on the dependency of hydrogen solubility on oxygen solubility.
Keywords: Metallurgy, copper, hydrogen, heat balance, solubility© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.