Water detection framework for industrial electric arc furnaces: Boundary modelling and formulation

This paper describes the development of a boundary model for the off-gas water vapour in an industrial steelmaking electric arc furnace (EAF). The solution addresses the mechanistic components of a complete EAF water detection framework. The boundary model has been implemented on an industrial alternating current (AC) EAF. The model specifies upper and lower limits in real-time of the expected EAF off-gas water vapour leaving the furnace, and it provides a valuable on-line monitoring tool to the operator on what boundary to expect for the off-gas water vapour in different circumstances. An essential data required for the framework is the EAF off-gas composition. So, in this work, an off-gas analyzer with a human machine interface (HMI) and a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system was installed in the first step. Then, in order to evaluate the developed water leak detection framework and verify the obtained results, industrial trials were designed in which a certain amount of water was intentionally added into the furnace by increasing the electrode spray water flow rate. Moreover, we have shown how the presented framework can be used to appropriately adjust the alarm setting values in control/emergency shutdown systems of industrial EAF to enhance the safety and availability of the plant.