Abstract
Heat-treatment furnaces for workpiece pre-rolling heating are heating plants of the transition type where sheet slabs with various characteristics are simultaneously heated. The heat treatment furnace performance is directly connected with the efficient operation of the rolling mill process plants. The irregular operation pace of the rolling mill complicates the implementation of energy-saving workpiece pre-rolling heating modes and increases the risk of delivering an insufficiently heated workpiece. This paper proposes the system of controlling the heat mode of the heat-treatment furnace by the criterion of fuel consumption rate minimization and controlling over a real heated state of a sheet slab located at the workpiece pushing from the heat-treatment furnace to the rolling mill. The author uses a simplified mathematical model of workpiece heating intended for defining the energy-saving heating path accounting for the impact of technological and structural constraints in the workpiece heating process. The calculation is conducted in real time and allows obtaining an optimal heating path of each workpiece at the moment of its loading into the heat-treatment furnace. The paper considers the necessity of interaction and the interaction itself of the subsystems performing the key function in the energy-saving operation mode of the heat-treatment furnace at workpiece heating. The author studied the subsystems of forecasting the workpiece heating time on the state of the rolling mill equipment and the geometrical dimensions of the rolled band, control over gaseous fuel burning in the heat-treatment furnace operation space, system of control over the workpiece heating state before pushing from the heat-treatment furnace and forecasting the roll temperature after the treatment of the rolling mill roughing train.
Highlights
Pre-rolling heating of metal in heat-treatment furnaces is one of the most energy-intensive processes of making flat-rolled steel
The optimal heating control system is efficient provided that the furnaces have redundant power and are capable of zonal distribution of thermal loads
For a typical hot-rolling mill, redundant power is available for 30–45% of the total runtime; the rest of the time, furnaces run at peak performance and minimum specific fuel costs
Summary
Pre-rolling heating of metal in heat-treatment furnaces is one of the most energy-intensive processes of making flat-rolled steel. The bulk of such products is made of slab blanks produced by continuous casting machines (CCM). It cannot roll, but the furnace is running All of this complicates controlling the thermal condition of the furnace and optimizing the energy use of the pre-rolling heat treatment process. When controlling a heating furnace, the main problem is choosing a blank heating trajectory that will minimize the total energy costs of heating the slab to a level required for further rolling. What complicates the problem is that a furnace may simultaneously process blanks of varying initial thermal condition as well as of different steel grades. This allows creating optimal heating modes, taking into account all aspects that arise during the heating process
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