Debottlenecking of Conventional Copper Smelters Alessandro Navarra Industrial Engineering Department Universidad Católica del Norte Antofagasta, Chile anavarra@ucn.cl Seng How Kuan Department of Mechanical and Material Engineering Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman Bandar Sungai Long, Malaysia kuansh@utar.edu.my Roberto Parra Metallurgical Engineering Department Universidad de Concepción Concepción, Chile rparra@udec.cl Boyd Davis Kingston Process Metallurgy Kingston, Canada bdavis@kpm.ca Frank Mucciardi Department of Mining and Materials Engineering McGill University Montreal, Canada frank.mucciardi@mcgill.ca Abstract—Copper smelters have two central operations: smelting, following by converting. Firstly, the smelting operation is continuous, and is usually over-dimensioned compared to the downstream operations. Secondly, the converting operation is performed in discrete batches that may be executed in parallel, and must share a limited set of resources, including offgas handling capacity and oxygen capacity. Converting is often a major bottleneck in conventional copper smelters. In recent decades there have been considerable technological enhancements that focus on different aspects of copper smelters, such as high pressure injection, matte granulation, sensors, and expert control systems. Nonetheless, copper smelters are reluctant to implement these technologies unless they are adequately justified, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The current paper adapts the Theory of Constraints to describe the bottlenecking phenomena that occur within copper smelters, and how they may be resolved using incremental technological upgrades. The resulting benefits can be quantified using a Discrete Event Simulation framework. Sample calculations are demonstrated. Keywords—Copper smelting; Peirce-Smith converting; Theory of Constraints; Discrete Event Simulation; Rockwell Arena © , OptQuest © I. INTRODUCTION Annual copper production is roughly 18.5 million tons [1], worth $80 billion US/year. Within this total, conventional copper smelters represent approximately 60% [2,3,4], as depicted Figure 1. These so-called conventional smelters are characterized by the operational connections between the smelting and converting furnaces (Figure 2). There are roughly 100 conventional copper smelters in the world. They typically have one, or at most two smelting furnaces, feeding into several converters; the converters are placed side-by-side forming a converting aisle. Conventional 2395 © IEOM Society International Proceedings - International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March 8-10, 2016