The present diploma thesis presents processes, which take place in a rotary kiln during the calcination of industrial samples of hydrated titanium dioxide. These samples were made by the sulphate process and were taken from Cinkarna Celje company for thermal analysis. Calcination is divided into three sub-processes: drying, desulfurization and rutilization. This thesis focuses on the first two processes, which strongly influence the course of rutilization. As mentioned, the calcination process takes place in a rotary kiln, where the temperature rises along the length of the kiln and at the very end can reach temperatures as high as 1200 °C. The first sub-process is drying, which eliminates water from the samples. The elimination of water occurs in two intervals: during the first interval the evaporation of surface water takes place and the second interval is the evaporation of water from the pores of the material. The latter occurs at higher temperatures.
The second sub-process is called the desulfurization, where sulphur dioxide is eliminated from the sample and it also occurs in two intervals. The first one involves the evaporation of free sulfuric acid. This eliminates the last residual water and at the same time, due to the high temperature, causes the conversion from sulphur trioxide to sulphur dioxide. During the second interval the sulphate bridges start to decompose which triggers also rutilization.
With the help of data obtained from thermal analysis (which was previously done by Tilen Kopač), I determined the temperature intervals for both drying and the desulfurization processes. Based on this determination, I calculated the corresponding activation energies for both processes for various samples. Corresponding calculations were done by data processing using the non-isothermal/isoconversial method. Based on critical review of the obtained results I can conclude that the method was used correctly, and the numbers obtained are accurate. The results from diploma thesis will help optimizing the calcination process, namely the optimization and temperature control along the length of the kiln for better process efficiency and lower energy consumption to achieve such high temperatures.
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