Fürstenhausen coking plant

Cooling tower frame

Fürstenhausen gasometer

The coking plant Fürstenhausen was a coking plant of Saarbergwerke AG in Fürstenhausen , a district of Völklingen in Saarland .

history

The construction of the coking plant between 1957 and 1959 coincided with the economic annexation of the Saarland to France. The location was chosen by the “Régie des mines de la Sarre” because of its proximity to the Luisenthal mine . From there, up to 60% of the coal used reached the coking plant inexpensively and in an environmentally friendly manner on a conveyor belt through the coking tunnel under the Saar .

Production was initially limited to two batteries. The first coke was pressed on July 14, 1959, the French national holiday. In October of the same year, the first construction phase ended with the commissioning of batteries three and four. Between 1963 and 1966 the capacity was doubled to eight batteries.

With the construction of the Fürstenhausen coking plant, Saarbergwerke AG pursued the goal of marketing the highest possible proportion of Saar coal in the form of coke with the help of the stamping technology developed in the Saar. The capacity of the coking plant was originally designed exclusively for blast furnace coke and was 1.5 million tons per year. In addition, 690 million m³ of gas, 82,000 tons of crude tar , 27,500 tons of crude benzene , 14,000 tons of ammonium sulfate and 1,200 tons of crude phenol were produced annually .

A benzene refining and distillation plant was in operation until 1985. In this plant, the crude benzene from all coking plants in the Saarland was processed into finished products (e.g. pure benzene and motor benzene). In addition, from 1979 the world's first molecular sieve plant for the production of ultra-pure hydrogen from coke gas was connected, which had not been in operation since 1989 for sales reasons.

Efforts by the coking plant to reduce its dependence on the steel industry led to the production of reducing coke in the late 1960s, which is used in electric furnaces in the chemical industry. The production of foundry coke began in the 1970s. As the sales of crushed coke could also be increased, the screening plant was adapted to the expanded production range in 1969 and enlarged accordingly. In the mid-1970s, the performance of the ramming technology could be significantly improved. This led to the construction of a 6 m coking chamber in Fürstenhausen. After several years of development work, the 6 m rammer technology had proven its operational suitability for large-scale use.

When pig iron production in the Saarhütten in the Rogesa was centralized at the Dillingen site in the early 1980s , the decision was made to build the Saar central coking plant in Dillingen to replace the outdated, smaller ironworks coking plants. The Saarberg pounding technology developed in Fürstenhausen was used in the Saar central coking plant. This technology is now marketed worldwide, including in France, India, Poland, Russia and the Czech Republic.

In 1991, as part of the expansion of the environmental protection facilities, a coke gas desulphurization system with components to improve wastewater went into operation. The system desulphurizes both the fuel gas for the coke batteries and the town gas to the limit values prescribed by law. In addition, the dedusting systems were adapted to the state of the art.

A specific problem in ramming technology is the handling of the filling gases. The Fürstenhausen coking plant has also carried out development work in this area for years. It ranged from devices for steam extraction to filling gas extraction and incineration vehicles with a washing section for the flue gases .

The state of the art corresponds to an integrated system for transferring the filling gases into the existing gas cleaning process. This technology represents a very efficient and at the same time cost-effective method for controlling the filling gases in rammed coking plants and has proven itself in practical operation since 1992. It guarantees a dust-free and noise-free extraction of the filling gases generated during the setting process. The operators of rammed coking plants also showed great interest in the transfer system.

In the last few years there has been a sharp drop in coke sales. The main reasons for this were:

The weak steel market,
Cheap imports of coke, e.g. B. from former Eastern Bloc countries and China and
Reduced coke requirement for pig iron production in the blast furnace thanks to the coal injection technology.

The coking plant capacity had to be adapted to the lower demand; Four of the previous eight coke batteries have therefore been decommissioned since 1991. The workforce had to be reduced from around 680 in the 1980s to 360 now. With the construction of a biologically working sewage treatment plant - 1994–1995 - the possibility was created to release all waste water from production into the environment in a much cleaner way.

Decommissioning

On June 30, 1999, batteries 6–8 were shut down and the Fürstenhausen coking plant was shut down. The demolition began a short time later. The Fürstenhausen coking plant has made a significant contribution to the coal sales of the Saarland mines during its 40 years of operation. On average, more than 1.3 million tons of saar coal were refined into coke in Fürstenhausen per year, with the peak values previously being over 1.8 million tons.

Since it went into operation, the Fürstenhausen coking plant has produced around 50 million tons of coke from 44 million tons of Saar coal and 16 million tons of foreign coal, petroleum coke and coke meal . This corresponds to the load of around 50,000 freight trains with a total length of more than 15,000 kilometers. To get this amount of coal through, about 3 million furnace cycles were required; H. each furnace chamber had to be filled and emptied nearly 12,000 times.

Only the iron framework of the cooling tower (Bischhofkühler) reminds of the Fürstenhausen coking plant. The gasometer, 76 meters high and 45 meters in diameter and with a capacity of 100,000 m³, was blown up on September 6, 2008 at 8 a.m. after several weeks of preparation.

Parts of the former coking plant are now used as conversion areas. In April 2013, a solar park with a peak output of 3.94 megawatts was connected to the grid, which RAG Montan Immobilien implemented in cooperation with Wirsol .

Individual evidence

Web links

49.24083 6.880145Coordinates: 49 ° 14 '27 " N , 6 ° 52' 48.5" E

[1] Closure of the Fürstenhausen coking plant (PDF; 762 kB)

[2] Solar power from the coking plant site (Saarbrücker Zeitung)