As a coke oven battery ages, cracks and fissures develop on the refractory wall separating the ovens from the heating walls through which leakage of raw gas takes place from the ovens to the heating walls leading to chimney emissions. This cross-leakage is an early indication of battery health and refractory condition. Determination and grading of cross-leakage can be an important part of maintenance strategies that eliminate or delay capital expenditure on new batteries or major battery refurbishment with minimum effect on production due to downtime. Conventionally, cross-leakage has been visually estimated in terms of chimney smoking or vertical flue inspection. However, these methods are qualitative and subjective in nature. This paper discusses a process that has been developed for the quantification of cross-leakage from individual ovens as well as coke oven battery as a whole. Using this process, cross-leakages from all the coke oven batteries of Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) were successfully determined. The process was next used for regular monitoring of health of 2 batteries at Bokaro Steel Plant and is under implementation in other coke batteries through out SAIL.
