Titanium bearing material flow control in the manufacture of titanium tetrachloride with silica content monitoring of the titanium product using feedback and feed forward responses

摘要

This disclosure relates to a process for controlling chlorination reactions in manufacturing titanium tetrachloride in a fluidized bed reactor, followed by processing to form a titanium product comprising an amount of silica, the process comprising: (a) feeding carbonaceous material, titanium bearing material comprising an amount of silica, and chlorine to the fluidized bed reactor to form a gaseous stream, and condensing the gaseous stream to form titanium tetrachloride, a non-condensed gas stream and a condensable product stream; (b) processing the titanium tetrachloride to form a titanium product comprising an amount of silica; (c) analyzing the titanium product comprising an amount of silica to determine the analyzed concentration of silica; (d) identifying a set point concentration of silica; (e) calculating the difference between the analyzed concentration of silica and the set point concentration of silica; (f) measuring the titanium tetrachloride flow to a processing reactor that releases chlorine; (g) measuring the flow of fresh chlorine added to the fluidized bed; (h) measuring the flow of the titanium bearing material added to the fluidized bed reactor and establishing a historic average flow of the titanium bearing material added to the fluidized bed reactor; (i) calculating the chlorine released from the titanium tetrachloride that is processed using the titanium tetrachloride flow data from step (f); (j) calculating the total chlorine flow to the fluidized bed reactor by adding the chlorine flow in step (g) to the chlorine flow calculated in step (i) and establishing a historic average chlorine flow; (k) calculating a unit titanium bearing material consumption per unit chlorine; (l) calculating an estimated current consumption rate of titanium bearing material based on the total chlorine flow from step (j) times the unit titanium bearing material consumption per unit chlorine from step (k); (l) calculating an estimated current consumption rate of titanium bearing material based on the total chlorine flow from step (j) times the unit titanium bearing material consumption per unit chlorine from step (k); and (m) generating a signal based on difference generated in step (e) that provides a feedback response and combining this to the estimated current consumption rate of titanium bearing material from step (l) to provide a feed forward response to control the flow of the titanium bearing material into the fluidized bed reactor.