Introduction
Blast furnaces in steel plants are constantly striving for achieving higher efficiencies, lower operating costs, higher productivity & improved quality with more flexible use of raw material & lower energy consumption.
However, due to the harsh environment inside the furnace, it is impossible to visually observe the physical & chemical processes inside the furnace & hence the need for remote sensors for observing the blast furnace processes.
Need
With the advent of Pulverised Coal Injection (PCI), constant monitoring of the tuyeres & the raceway has become important in order to avoid tuyere blockages.
The tuyere blockages, if left unattended, lead to:
- Blowpipe, upper assembly & auxiliary equipment failure often resulting in furnace breakouts
- Inefficient blast furnace reactions
- Higher coke rate
- Thermal instability
Tata Steel has developed the Tuyereye, a vision based furnace monitoring system which can be used to observe the condition of the tuyeres online using advanced image processing techniques.
Features
- Online inspection of all tuyeres of blast furnaces through CCD cameras using image processing techniques
- Shows the thermal profile of the tuyeres indicating the temperatures, heat-zones and the blockage of the tuyeres as a percentage
- Above a threshold value of the blockage, it generates an alarm for the operator to take necessary action
- The live image and thermal profiles are retrieved in the form of movies and displayed for the selected tuyeres for live as well as historical data.
- The camera arrangement allows for both manual and automatic inspection.
Benefits
- Online monitoring of each tuyere condition using image processing techniques
- Alarm generation for blockage
- The thermal profiles of the tuyeres may give an indication of the water ingress inside the tuyeres.
- Gives an indication of the tuyeres where PCI is taking place.
- Operator can take proactive countermeasures to avoid abnormal phenomena
- Allows the operator to directly observe the peephole
- May help the operators & engineers in avoiding furnace breakouts
- High clarity & stable images
- Easy to install