Development of Automated Control System of Blast-Furnace Melting Operation

The article presents the results of the development and the prospects for the use of an improved system of extreme-optimizing control of the blast furnace gas supplying to ensure minimum specific amounts of coke and maximum hourly productivity of the blast furnace process. Software and technical implementation of the step-by-step system for automatic optimization of control for supplying natural gas was improved. This modification virtually eliminates the periodic oscillatory search mode and reduces the turndown of periodic search fluctuations in the specific amount of natural gas in the final limit mode when the optimal operation of the blast furnace is reached. The application of the extremum search method by storage of the increments extremum of the optimized parameter during one control step is substantiated. A block diagram of an improved system for automatic optimization of control is given. The calculated trajectories of the search mode in the proposed system are shown. This scheme almost completely eliminates such disadvantages as: the presence of oscillatory phenomena in the systems of automatic optimization of control, at the search mode; occurrence of significant changes in the control action during the search mode in the conditions of approaching the optimized parameter to the extremum. The implementation of the proposed step-by-step system for automatic optimization of control is the creation of software for an already existing system to control the supply of natural gas to the blast furnace. Therefore, the adaptation of this system with maximum intellectual efficiency does not require significant capital expenditures.