This invention relates to an apparatus for controlling the drive of and/or the operation of a quenching car/bucket car for a coke oven as well as a method therefor, and more particularly to an apparatus for effectively accomplishing the automatic control of the operation of the quenching car/bucket car and a method therefor.
Conventionally, the control of the drive and/or operation of a quenching car for a coke oven is generally carried out by an operator riding in an electric car drawing the quenching car. Now, the manner or procedure of controlling operation of the quenching car will be described. First, when red-hot coke, as calcined is pushed out, by means of a pusher, from a designated one of the coking chambers of a coke oven from which the coke is to be delivered while keeping the pusher, a guide car and a quenching car accurately registered or aligned with respect to the designated coking chamber, it is charged onto the quenching car of which a door is kept closed while causing the quenching car to travel in correspondence with the speed of the coke pushed out. After the charging is completed, the quenching car is moved into a quenching tower and located accurately at a predetermined position in the quenching tower. Then, water is sprinkled from a water tank arranged above the quenching tower on the red-hot coke charged onto the quenching car to quench the coke and then the water is drained off from the coke. Subsequently, the quenching car is moved to coke wharves and then accurately stopped at a predetermined position in front of designated one of coke wharves. Thereafter, the door of the quenching car is opened to discharge the quenched coke onto the wharf. Thus, the processing of calcined coke is completed. The above-described procedure is repeated with respect to each of the coking chambers in order, resulting in the delivery of coke from the coking oven being carried out.
The control of drive of a bucket car for a coke oven is likewise carried out by an operator riding in an electric car drawing the bucket car. More particularly, red-hot coke as calcined is pushed out or discharged, by means of a pusher, from designated one of coking chambers of a coke oven from which coke is to be delivered while keeping the pusher, a guide car and a bucket car accurately located or aligned with respect to the designated coking chamber. The discharged coke is then charged into a coke bucket on the bucket car. Subsequently, the bucket car is moved to a coke dry quenching facility (hereinafter referred to as "CDQ") and accurately located at a predetermined position in CDQ. Then, the coke bucket in which the red-hot coke is charged is hung up by means of a charging crane to cause the coke to be subject to a dry quenching treatment. The coke bucket which has thus been rendered empty is then placed down into the bucket car for the next operation. The above-described operation is repeated with respect to each of the coking chambers, resulting in the delivery of coke from the coking oven to the bucket car being carried out.
For the operation of the quenching car/bucket car for the coke oven, the correlation between the quenching car/bucket car and other working machines such as the guide car, pusher and the like is highly important. To this end, it is generally required that workers or operators carefully and closely maintain contact with each other using a communication means such as a wire telephone, a wireless telephone or the like to verify with each other the working condition of the working equipment, such as its working position or the like.
However, the artificial or manual operation of the quenching car/bucket car carried out while the operators maintain contact with each other is apt to cause exchange of incorrect information due to misunderstanding or the like, resulting in the operators often failing to carry out the operation while properly grasping the working situation, the working position and the like.
In view of the foregoing, an automatic control means is proposed for successively automatically controlling the operation of the working machines such as the pusher, guide cat, quenching car/bucket car and the like. However, taking, as an example, a track surface on which the working position of the quenching car/bucket car is determined, lots of load is applied onto the track surface because the sum of weight of the quenching car/bucket car and weight of the electric car traveling while drawing the quenching car/bucket car reaches a high level such as, for example, 90 tons (-55 tons (quenching car)+35 tons (electric car)). This causes the positional relationship of the track surface to a body of the coke oven, the quenching tower, the coke wharf/CDQ and the like to be readily varied, so that the track surface fails to serve as a reference surface for the operation of the quenching car/bucket car, resulting in a failure to permit the automatic control to be effectively carried out. Also, in order to permit the track surface to endure such high load as described above, it is required that there is a rigid concrete foundation to strengthen the track surface. Unfortunately, this leads to a problem of increased costs.