Treffer: Intelligent monitoring systems for blast furnaces : Final report

The blast furnace process is complex, is subject to material and operational disturbances and cannot easily be modelled in a dynamic sense. Reliance, therefore, on measurements from the process or the hot metal is necessary to provide data on the furnace activity. The conversion of this data into information is at the heart of this project with the objective of providing to the blast furnace personnel early warning of poor furnace operation so that corrective action can be taken before a more serious or more disturbed situation arises. The intelligent monitoring systems which have been developed include the detection and location of tuyère and stave coolant leaks, the use of multivariate statistical methods for relating stability and permeability to operational conditions and burden materials, thermal prediction modelling, the detection of asymmetric furnace operation and permeability disturbances, a pattern recognition system based on wall temperatures and an operator guidance system, which is based on fixed and mobile probe information and the furnace thermal state. A critical review of the methods is undertaken to assess the feasibility of their transfer to other blast furnaces