A charging system for a shaft smelt reduction furnace includes a frame structure for mounting on a top charge opening of a shaft smelt reduction vessel; a center shaft arrangement supported by the frame structure and for removing off-gas gases from the furnace and to introduce granular charge materials to form a stack of materials in the furnace. The center shaft arrangement includes a center hood for off-gas extraction; a pair of first and second feed channels for first and second materials. The center hood includes a pair of facing off-gas panels defining an off-gas channel. The partition walls include lower portions that extend towards each other below the center hood to define a center feed passage, whereby material descending through the first feed channels may accumulate on lower portions according to the angle of repose of the material, permitting self-adjustment of the first material stock-line in the shaft arrangement.

A production facilities monitoring method monitors an operation status of a plurality of production facilities of a same kind located at a plurality of production sites and includes: a data information preparation step of aggregating operational data of each of the production facilities for each of the production sites; a data accumulation step of accumulating the operational data aggregated at the data information preparation step into a computer located at a data accumulation site; a data analysis step of analyzing a current operation status at each of the production facilities, using current operational data and past operational data accumulated at the data accumulation step; and an operation status determination step of determining whether operation is abnormal at each of the production facilities, based on an analysis result of the data analysis step.

Disclosed is a blast furnace apparatus includes: a rotating chute; a plurality of tuyeres; a profile measurement device configured to measure surface profiles of a burden charged into the blast furnace through the rotating chute; and a blowing amount controller configured to control a blowing amount of at least one of hot blast or pulverized coal in each of the plurality of tuyeres, in which the profile measurement device includes: a radio wave distance meter installed on the blast furnace top and configured to measure the distance to the surface of the burden charged; and an arithmetic unit configured to derive the surface profiles of the burden on a basis of distance data for the entire blast furnace related to distances to the surface of the burden obtained by scanning a detection wave of the radio wave distance meter in the blast furnace in a circumferential direction.

Disclosed is a method for estimating a blast furnace throat temperature based on a multilayer ore-to-coke ratio distribution model. According to the method, blast furnace equipment parameters and a burden distribution matrix are utilized, the burden layer profile of each layer is calculated according to the burden distribution movement process, a burden layer distribution model is established in combination with the descending process, and the ore-to-coke ratio of each burden layer is obtained. According to the method, the ore-to-coke ratio distribution of multiple layers and main parameters of a blast furnace are used as input, a generalized regression neural network is used for estimating the temperature at the corresponding measurement position of throat temperature, so as to realize the monitoring of throat temperature in the blast furnace process.

A method for detecting a fluctuation of a solidified layer, and a method for operating a blast furnace by employing the relevant method. In the method for detecting a fluctuation of a solidified layer, the fluctuation of the solidified layer in the lower part of a blast furnace is detected by using the amount of heat supplied to pig iron in the lower part of the blast furnace and the amount of heat in the pig iron tapped in a predetermined period.

An optimal calculation method of an energy operating condition in an iron mill includes calculating, using a total energy operation cost of the iron mill within a predetermined period of time from a current time as an evaluation function, an operation condition of an energy facility in the iron mill as a decision variable such that a value of the evaluation function decreases, at each predetermined time within the predetermined period of time, based on actual values and estimated values of a generation amount and a used amount of energy utility for each of factories comprised in the iron mill. The method includes a step of calculating the decision variable by imposing an equality constraint such that the decision variable related to a power generation facility included in the energy facility is constant within a predetermined aggregation time.

A method and system for operating a seal gas compressor utilized in a direct reduction process including: monitoring a pH level of a water stream used in the seal gas compressor, wherein the pH level of the water stream is affected by a reformer flue gas stream that comes into contact with the water stream, wherein the monitoring step is carried out one or more of upstream of the seal gas compressor and downstream of the compressor; and adjusting the pH level of the water stream to maintain the pH level of the water stream within a predetermined range based on feedback from the monitoring step. The method includes maintaining the pH level of the water stream upstream of the seal gas compressor in a range between 7.5 and 10 and maintaining the pH level of the water stream downstream of the seal gas compressor in a range between 7.8 and 9.5.

A method and system for operating a seal gas compressor utilized in a direct reduction process including: monitoring a pH level of a water stream used in the seal gas compressor, wherein the pH level of the water stream is affected by a reformer flue gas stream that comes into contact with the water stream, wherein the monitoring step is carried out one or more of upstream of the seal gas compressor and downstream of the compressor; and adjusting the pH level of the water stream to maintain the pH level of the water stream within a predetermined range based on feedback from the monitoring step. The method includes maintaining the pH level of the water stream upstream of the seal gas compressor in a range between 7.5 and 10 and maintaining the pH level of the water stream downstream of the seal gas compressor in a range between 7.8 and 9.5.

An abnormality detection method of detecting abnormality of a blast furnace from tuyere images shot by cameras installed in vicinities of a plurality of tuyeres of the blast furnace includes: collecting, in a time-series manner, representative brightness vectors defined by representative brightnesses determined based on brightness values of respective pixels for each of the tuyeres image previously shot by the cameras at a same time; extracting a principal component vector by performing principal component analysis on the representative brightness vectors collected in the time-series manner; calculating, as an evaluation value, a length of a normal line drawn in a direction of the principal component vector from the representative brightness vector collected from the tuyere images shot by the cameras at the same time during an operation; and detecting the abnormality of the blast furnace by comparing the evaluation value with a predetermined threshold.

A method of operating a shaft furnace includes inserting a mixture including anthracite coal and coke into a cavity defined by the furnace, and disposing a metal feedstock within the cavity. The method includes injecting natural gas at a natural gas flow rate and a first quantity of oxygen gas at a first oxygen gas flow rate into the cavity simultaneously through at least one burner. The method also includes driving a second quantity of oxygen gas at a supersonic oxygen gas flow rate into the cavity through at least one lance, wherein the supersonic oxygen gas flow rate is greater than the first oxygen gas flow rate. The method also includes combusting the mixture within the cavity to produce a stack gas, melting the metal feedstock to produce a melted metal material, and monitoring the stack gas to thereby operate the shaft furnace. A shaft furnace is also disclosed.