An improved plant-wide multiperiod optimization model of a byproduct gas supply system in the iron and steel-making process

Abstract

In an integrated steel mill, the byproduct gases of steel production processes can be recovered as fuel for the plant itself and can be used to generate electricity and steam in power plants. This work addresses the development of a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model to solve the problem of byproduct fuel distribution, with the goal of maximizing energy utilization. Improvements are made in the formulation of the model and a heuristic procedure is proposed to assign appropriate weights to the objective function penalties, resulting in an increase in the operational performance of the fuel distribution system. Through case studies, a comparison is performed among a previous MILP-based optimization model found in the literature, the improved one proposed in this work and the real-world behavior of a fuel distribution system run by the operators without the aid of a computational tool.