Simulação em regime estacionário e dinâmico como ferramenta para otimização de usina de britagem de agregados

Abstract

After a crushing plant is commissioned and is operating, good opportunities often exist to increase capacity, product yield and/or reduce its energy consumption. Such modifications can be as small as changes in crusher setting and screen apertures, that involve negligible cost, or larger, such as introduction of conveyor belts, magnetic pulleys and plant-wide control systems. The work analyses the application of simulation, initially performed in steady-state in the JKSimMet® software comparing with the dynamic simulation performed in Matlab-Simulink platform, in a crushing plant producing aggregates in Rio de Janeiro. The different simulation platforms have been used in whatif scenarios that included changes in closed-side setting of crushers in different crushing stages and screen openings. The use of dynamic simulation allowed us to address the limitations found in steady state simulations, such as the prediction of mass flow imbalances and the prediction of shutdowns due to plant problems. For the case the plant in question, it was observed that moderate to substantial increases could be reached in throughput, without changing the number of working hours, at reduced specific energy costs. The work also validates the models in Matlab-Simulink on the basis of comparable models in JKSimMet® , discussing the benefits of dynamic in contrast to steady-state simulations of this type of circuits. The work addresses the need for the implementation of models that reliably represent the behavior observed in the day-to-day operation of a plant.