Design of Automation System for Blast Furnace
Abstract
Blast furnace is an essential equipment in many modern steel making plants, and it is one of the basic facilities for smelting pig iron. The automation of blast furnace needs to ensure the normal and stable operation of the furnace, and also guarantee the quality of blast furnace products. This paper introduces the design of automation system for blast furnace, focusing on control requirements and automation equipment selection.
1 Introduction
Blast furnace iron-making production is one of the most important parts of steel production. The main function of the blast furnace is to reduce and smelt the iron ore into pig iron. It is a smelting process using coke as fuel and ore as a raw material in a cupola furnace. The Blast furnace must be brought into ten production requirements: Keeping stable system pressure, temperature and gas composition, maintaining good working environment, controlling the running speed of furnace, ensuring the safety of furnace operation and ensuring the living environment in the workshop. Good control technology is the key to the normal operation of blast furnace. Automation control technology makes it possible to realize precise control over combustion, heat and material circulation, and maximize the production efficiency of the furnace.
2 Design Requirements of Blast Furnace Automation System
2.1 System demand analysis
The production of blast furnace requires a good visual display of the process, dynamic control of the process parameters, early fault warning and prevention, and effective management and scheduling of workers. Therefore, the automation of blast furnace should satisfy the following requirements:
1) Real-time monitoring of furnace temperature and other parameters.
2) Accurately control the temperature in the furnace and timely alarm.
3) Accurately record the operational parameters of the furnace, so that the process data can be stored and analyzed to monitor the operation of the furnace.
4) Can automatically feed and discharge materials in the furnace, accurately adjust the amount of fuel and air supply into the furnace, and adjust the temperature in the furnace by changing the amount of fuel and air supply.
5) For the safety of workers, it needs to be able to implement automatic shutdown and automatic cut-off of furnace furnace in case of danger.
2.2 System selection
In terms of hardware selection, the automation system of blast furnace is mainly composed of field controllers, HMIs, PCs and instrumentation. The field controllers can do the closed-loop control by setting the temperature set points, generating the electric signals, converting the loop signals in the furnace, then transmitting the signals to the HMIs to monitor the temperature, air quantity and other parameters of the furnace.
In terms of software selection, the programmable logic controller (PLC) is used to control and run the automation system of blast furnace. The process data of electric furnace can be collected and analyzed with SCADA, so as to obtain real-time operation data of the furnace. At the same time, the HMI and SCADA can be linked to achieve the visualization of process data.
3 Conclusion
The automation system of blast furnace must be designed according to the production process of furnace, the temperature range and other conditions, in order to ensure the normal and stable operation of the furnace, and to guarantee the quality of blast furnace products. In the design of automation system, we select the appropriate automation equipment and link them together with centralized control. Through the combination of these equipments, the automation of furnace process can be realized, which can improve the production efficiency and ensure the safety of workers.
