Improving Premium Steel Manufacturing through Automation

Tata Steel Speciality is the only UK manufacturer of high value speciality engineering steels for applications such as critical aerospace and the automotive market. Production is very energy intensive and via batch process, of which the analysis step contributes a significant amount to the batch time Each batch is usually different and for premium grades the control and reduction of impurities is critical. Automation and closed loop control of the process would offer significant productivity, energy reduction and sustainability benefits. While laser instruments, such as those designed and built by TDL Sensors Ltd, already enable accurate and fast measurements in the process industries, the challenge in the steel industry is the hostile environment, it is hot, dusty and under vacuum. Existing analysis instruments often use a sampling systems to reduce the temperature, dust load and any contaminants thus adding a time delay to measurement. This project seeks to develop, install and validate in situ laser based instrumentation to monitor in close proximity to the molten steel batch reactor and use this to close the control loop to significantly reduce the batch times. A second element is a feasibility study on the practicality of using a laser to accurately measure the molten steel temperature.