Steel & reheat furnaces

Steel producers are under constant pressure to make a quality product and stay competitive on price. Reheat furnaces are often not running as efficiently as they could, and that shows up in product quality and in operating cost. Mills and other operators of reheat furnaces can use AI to cut fuel cost and operating expense.

Furnace designs differ, and they share a set of problems: energy is wasted, the control system is coarse or hard to use, and too many slabs are rejected because the temperature at extraction is wrong. The difficulty comes from conditions such as these:

• Different products sit next to each other in the furnace.
• Burner performance is inconsistent, and the flame does not stay where it should.
• Temperature feedback from inside the furnace is limited.
• The process is interrupted by maintenance and other delays.
• Temperature setpoints and measured furnace temperatures correlate poorly.
• The furnace itself degrades, loses heat, and struggles to meet setpoints.

Why the Griffin AI Toolkit

The Griffin AI Toolkit® gives steel producers a no-code graphical interface with tools for modeling and analyzing the process they already have. It can also control and optimize that process in real time, with little reprogramming of the PLC or DCS. The same approach applies beyond a single furnace: PID control, metallurgical modeling and optimization, reheat and blast furnace control, and other parts of steel production. Implementations have saved millions of dollars in fuel and operating cost.

At a large Midwestern steel mill, Griffin sets temperature setpoints for a group of reheat furnaces that process a mix of material with different temperature requirements. A digital twin of the reheat process, and a clearer operator display, show how each slab is heating. A time-sensitive neural network predicts the rolling temperature of a slab and adjusts furnace temperatures to meet production. Griffin also takes on operator tasks such as inserting a heating delay so material is not rejected for temperature. On that project, temperature rejects fell to virtually none.

Contact us to talk about productivity, fuel, and cost on your furnaces. Reheat furnace paper (PDF).