A mathematical model to control thermal stability of blast furnace using proactive thermal indicator

ABSTRACT

The determination of thermal condition of the blast furnace is necessary for various reasons, such as to facilitate the operation, maintain a stable furnace condition, predict heat or heat tendency of the furnace and predict hot metal temperature (HMT). It can become a tool for controlling the product quality of the blast furnace. This paper presents a mathematical model for estimating the thermal tendency of the blast furnace. The thermal condition of the blast furnace is represented as thermal energy index, wherein a high thermal energy index denotes heating up of furnace, while a low thermal energy index indicates chilling down of furnace. Using this model, one could hypothetically estimate the thermal condition of the blast furnace in real time. Thereby, corrective controllable actions can be taken on real time to attain the desired HMT before the arrival of actual hot metal analysis.

KEYWORDS:

• Blast furnace
• heat content
• thermal energy index
• hot metal temperature
• Si content
• energy balance

Acknowledgement

We acknowledge entire Blast Furnace Operation Team and IEM Team of Tata Steel Jamshedpur for extending their operational knowledge and making the process data from the furnace available for the analysis and development of the present system. We are also grateful to Automation Division, Tata Steel Limited, Jamshedpur works for providing us opportunity to carry out the above work, particularly special thanks to Mr. Anurag Agnihotri and Mr. Manish Kumar Singh who have been a constant source of motivation and especially for their ideas to derive the process benefits from the implemented systems.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Ashish Agrawal http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5550-0147