Revealing cohesive zone shape and location inside blast furnace

It is common practice in many blast furnaces to use the shape and position of the cohesive zone as a control guide for burden distribution. Knowledge of the location and shape of the cohesive zone will help to have better control over the blast furnace process and improve its thermal efficiency and productivity. Accurate estimation of the shape and location of the cohesive zone was believed to aid this objective. Hence for achieving better accuracy along with affordability to be used as a continuous monitoring method, a combined modelling approach of using furnace operating and probe data along with mathematical estimation model was attempted for estimating cohesive zone shape and location. Further, comparative evaluation was done with respect to current method adopted in Tata Steel based on process data analysis, for a given blast furnace. Both combined modelling approach and current method adopted in Tata Steel were found equally capable in predicting the cohesive zone root location but the combined modelling approach seemed to be better in predicting the overall shape of cohesive zone.