Patent ID: 8568568

Claim:
In a method of charging a coking oven having a battery of longitudinally extending and transversely spaced coking chambers each provided with a plurality of downwardly open and longitudinally spaced filling holes and with a respective longitudinally movable leveling rod, coal being charged by transversely traveling filling equipment into the chambers through the filling holes and leveled therein by the respective rods, the improvement comprising the steps of: with sensors provided on the leveling rods, scanning from above points on a surface of the coal charged through the holes into the respective chambers, the points being transversely and longitudinally spaced to form a grid with the points transversely spaced such that there are at least five of the points between each of the filling holes and a transversely adjacent filling hole of an adjacent chamber and longitudinally between two adjacent filling holes of the same chamber; and recording a respective measurement corresponding to a vertical position of the surface at each the points of the grid; and with a controller connected to the sensors, determining from the measurements thereof a three-dimensional filling-level profile of the surface of the charged coal for controlling operation of the filling equipment and filling of the chambers with the coal.