Simulation of potassium chloride compacting plants

The k+s group extracts potash and magnesium crude salts at six mines in Germany, with an annual output amounting to about 8 million tonnes of products. With a share of about 12%, the k+s Potash and Magnesium Products business segment is the fourth-largest producer in the world and the leading provider in Europe. Potassium chloride is a single-nutrient fertilizer with universal areas of application and is used globally for major crops, such as cereals, corn, rice and soy beans. As a granulate, potassium chloride is ideally suited to being spread evenly over fields using fertilizer spreaders. k+s also supplies potassium chloride as a fine-grain standard product for the industry, which processes it along with other nutrients to produce granulated complex fertilizers.

To obtain the desired product size distribution the crystalls are treated in compacting plants. The compacting plant was simulated using SolidSim with the aim to increase the throughput.

A compacting plant consists of aggglomeration, crushing and screening units. A simplified flowsheet in shown in figure 2.

The aim of the SolidSim simulation was to increase the throughput of the plant while, of course, the product had to be within specifications.To achieve this goal

1. a SolidSim simulation model for the compacting planthas been developed
2. the simulation model was trained based on process data using the SolidSim Unit Model Parameter Adjustment feature
3. a sensitivity analysis was performed to see which process parameter have the biggest influence on the plant throughput
4. a simulation study was performed to obtain optimized process paramete/process layouts

Using the SolidSim simulation several ways could be shown to increase the plant throughput significantly.