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Challenges in steel production that FLIR can solve

July 26, 2023

From building materials to automobiles to tools, it would be hard to find an area of our lives that does not depend on steel production. Steel producers, in turn, rely on low production costs and continuous uptime to make that much-needed steel efficiently and remain competitive.

There are two key components for steel production that can present a risk of failure and therefore require periodic inspection: electricity and oxygen. Electricity to run the plant and compressed oxygen to precisely control furnaces and foundries.

Fortunately, Teledyne FLIR has a wide range of products that make component inspection easy and enable you to locate faults quickly. Below, we describe some key risks in steel production and what FLIR solutions can solve them.

Challenges in steel production

The insulation inside switchgear, cables and other electrical system components is exposed to extremely high temperatures for long periods during steel production and must be inspected regularly to avoid failure. This high voltage environment can break down the insulation of switchgear, epoxy resin supports and bushings, resulting in partial discharge of electricity. If left unaddressed, the partial discharge can affect the power supply to critical equipment, cause the insulation to deteriorate and eventually lead to power failure.

Among the critical equipment affected by partial discharge is the oxygen compression system. Steel and other metal manufacturers use compressed oxygen to control combustion in converters, blast furnaces and foundries. Having the correct amount of oxygen flow at all times is critical to obtaining a high quality end product. Steel producers should also inspect for leaks in the compressed oxygen system, which can lead to higher energy costs and a lower quality end product.

Finally, production facilities are at risk of carbon monoxide (CO) gas leaks, as blast furnaces, coke ovens and Linz-Donawitz gases use CO as a major component. Not only is CO a threat to the lives of plant workers, but it is also harmful to the environment. Finding CO leaks can be a challenge because the gas is invisible to the naked eye and the effects of leaks are so gradual that it is difficult to notice them immediately. Gases used in the production process are also reused further down the line for power generation and reheating furnaces, which means that waste can cause financial costs in multiple parts of steel production.

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Solutions

Thermal imaging cameras offer multiple benefits to steel production lines. With their ability to provide hundreds of thousands of temperature measurements in each image, thermal cameras are a fast and efficient option for inspecting components susceptible to heat degradation and troubleshooting electrical problems. Heat is the first sign of failure in mechanical and electrical systems, so periodic inspections with a thermal imaging camera like the FLIR E96 allow manufacturers to avoid shutdowns caused by faulty wiring, overheating machines, or damaged fuses. Often, these inspections are performed with handheld cameras, but when incorporated into a system with machine vision, a fixed-mount thermal camera such as the FLIR A70. The image-transmitting camera allows continuous inspection without human intervention and keeps workers safe from high-temperature components.

Optical gas imaging (OGI) cameras are also becoming more common in factories and are perfect for detecting dangerous and costly gas leaks. OGI is used in the utility, oil and gas industries to detect a wide range of potential problems caused by gas leaks. The FLIR G346 has a special filter to visualize CO and other harmful gases, and can be used to quickly scan for potential leak points over wide areas from safe distances. Technicians can detect even the lowest level of gas emission with the GF346's high sensitivity mode if there is a sufficient difference between the ambient temperature of the leaking component and the background scene.

High-sensitivity mode showing a gas leak from a tower

While still a relatively new technology, acoustic imaging is proving successful on production lines and allows easy detection of both compressed air leaks and partial discharges. Acoustic imaging allows an operator to visualize the sounds generated by oxygen as it escapes from a compressed air system and partial discharge along with deterioration of insulation in electrical systems. The FLIR Si124 comes with 124 built-in microphones that then generate frequencies over a digital image, making any leaks easy and intuitive to find.

While factories are often filled with the sounds of machinery, the Si124 can filter out background noise and isolate leaks. The camera has a frequency range of two to 31 kHz to detect the smallest leaks over long distances or can be manufactured to detect even smaller leaks at shorter distances using frequencies up to 65 kHz. The noise filtering capability allows production facilities to find invisible gas leaks even in noisy environments with changes in airflow around a problem area.

Air leakage visualized with FLIR Si124 in steel production

The Si124 can also detect partial discharges from 130 meters away and then analyze and classify three types of discharge: surface discharge, floating discharge, and corona. When connected to Wi-Fi, the Si124 supports in-field reporting and can send images directly to the FLIR Acoustic Camera Viewer cloud service for sharing or downloading. Users can then easily create reports and share them with colleagues using FLIR Thermal Studio Pro.

There are many other test and measurement tools, software suites and development kits that work seamlessly with FLIR's optical, thermal and acoustic gas imaging cameras to provide a complete picture of the condition of electrical, mechanical and compressed oxygen systems. Addressing predictive maintenance with the right tools can help steelmakers maintain uptime, work efficiently, and keep costs low enough to remain competitive.

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