Metallurgy pays twice for energy: once at the burner and once again through the stack. Furnaces, converters, roasters and electrolysis lines throw off enormous quantities of high-grade heat, while the same plant needs steam for hydrometallurgy, hot air for concentrate drying and hot water for shops that may stand in a severe climate. We close that loop.
What metallurgical processes demand from a boiler plant
This is a hard environment for pressure equipment: dust-laden and chemically active gases, radiant heat, cyclic furnace schedules and a plan that never stops. Boilers here are part of the process line rather than a utility at the edge of the site, and their availability shows up in tonnes of output.
- Thermal fatigue
- A recovery boiler behind a converter sees the full load swing of the furnace, so heating surfaces are calculated against your actual schedule, not an averaged figure.
- Fouling and abrasion
- Surface geometry, gas velocity and cleaning access are chosen so that deposits do not become a permanent loss of output, and steels with a raised chromium content protect the zones at risk.
- Variable fuels
- Process gases, fuel oil, natural gas and solid fuels can all appear on one site, so furnace volume and burner sets are sized for the switch between them.
- Climate
- Mining sites are often remote and very cold. Cold-resistant grades, enlarged circulation circuits and outdoor housings keep plant running at extreme sub-zero temperatures.
Recovery first: free heat from your own furnaces
Off-gases from roasting and smelting leave the furnace at 800–1200 °C. PHOENIX and ECHO waste heat boilers stand in that stream and pass the heat into steam, hot water or thermal oil for fuel oil heating, hydrometallurgy, shop heating or power generation. The boiler burns nothing, so the heat costs only pumping and maintenance.
On a typical non-ferrous site this removes 20–30% of purchased fuel and pays for the installation in 1.5–3 years, depending on production volume and furnace running hours. Cooling the gas before the cleaning stage also makes the environmental duty on the stack easier to meet.
Fired plant for process and infrastructure
Steam for the process
TOR, HERO and TRIPASS cover steady demand from extraction circuits, autoclaves, solution heating and drying complexes. PULSE and MIRA X serve sites needing clean steam or large flows, while PILLAR and RAPID give a fast-starting source for intermittent duties.
Hot water, superheated water and air
TRINITY and MEGA heat rolling mills, concentrators and amenity blocks; QUANT, QUANTUM, EON and MEGA X supply superheated water where the network needs a higher temperature head. ZEPHYR, KENO, ROCK, MODUL and GUST heat drying air and working areas, ROOK and WARD house plant outdoors, and MAGMA and CRUX serve oil circuits.
Parameters you can plan around
- Steam
- From 600 kW with RAPID to 154 MW with MIRA X at 25–220 t/h, 45 bar and 450 °C; PULSE holds saturated steam to 12 bar and 180 °C.
- Waste heat
- PHOENIX up to 30 MW at 25 bar and ECHO up to 22 MW at 15 bar, both rated to 600 °C on the hot side.
- Hot and superheated water
- Up to 50 MW at 16 bar and 115 °C with MEGA, and up to 209 MW with MEGA X for site-wide networks.
- Thermal oil and air
- MAGMA and CRUX up to 300 °C in an unpressurised circuit; air heaters from 50 kW to 1500 kW.
Keeping the plant alive
Service life in metallurgy comes down to water chemistry and to how honestly the unit is operated. DEGAS deaerates the feed water, DRY and BUFFER handle blowdown and condensate, and BOOST or ECO take the flue gas temperature down so the last usable heat stays in the circuit.
CONTROL runs the unit, and the Digital Twin telemetry system records how it actually behaves: pressure, temperature, flue gas data and burner starts. Your team sees drift weeks before it becomes a trip, schedules maintenance against real running hours, and supports the lifetime warranty on the heat exchanger and main load-bearing elements with evidence.
From input data to commissioning
- Survey and data
- Furnace schedule, gas composition, temperature and volume, available fuels, water analysis and the control system interface.
- Calculation
- Thermal and strength calculation against the real cycle, including fatigue assessment for recovery boilers behind cyclic units.
- Manufacture and testing
- Incoming material control, non-destructive testing of pressure welds and hydraulic testing above working pressure.
- Acceptance
- EN 12952 and EN 12953 under PED 2014/68/EU, ASME practice on request, ISO 9001 quality system, and witnessed inspection by a notified body such as TÜV if your project requires it.
- Commissioning and service
- Supervised installation, burner setting, control tuning, operator training, then maintenance under a service contract.