A method of treating refractory-lined equipment includes accessing an interior of the refractory-lined equipment with an equipment repair apparatus, wherein the equipment repair apparatus includes a robotic arm and one or more end effectors coupled to an end of the robotic arm, inspecting refractory material that lines an inner wall of the refractory-lined equipment with a first end effector coupled to the end of the robotic arm, removing damaged refractory material from the inner wall with a second end effector coupled to the end of the robotic arm, removing one or more anchors from the inner wall with a third end effector coupled to the end of the robotic arm, and installing new refractory material on the inner wall with a fourth end effector coupled to the end of the robotic arm.

A system and method for monitoring consumption of graphite electrodes during the operation of an electric arc furnace (EAF) uses machine vision cameras operatively communicating with a computer processor. The system can determine, track, manage, and optimize the consumption of the graphite electrodes in real time. Electrode consumption is determined for each EAF heat by measuring the length and tip diameter of the electrode. The length and tip diameter are used to determine the electrode consumption amount using a consumption model. Measured hydraulic pressure within the EAF correlating with a known electrode weight can also be used to determine electrode consumption and correlated with the model calculation. Butt loss can also be determined based on the machine vision measured lengths of the electrode and/or based on the hydraulic pressure. The calculated electrode consumption amounts are also stored in a database and correlated to other measured EAF parameters for multiple EAFs.

An oxygen blowing lance comprising: a lance body including an oxygen conduit and cooling water inlet and outlet conduits surrounding said oxygen conduit; a lance head connected to said lance body and comprising a nozzle body, said nozzle body including a central strut having bore hole, a plurality of nozzles arranged about said central strut, and a plurality of cooling chambers arranged about said central strut, wherein said plurality of nozzles are in fluid communication with said oxygen conduit for discharging oxygen from said oxygen conduit onto a metal bath in a converter vessel, and wherein said plurality of cooling chambers are in fluid communication with said cooling water inlet and outlet conduits; a temperature probe or camera assembly received in said bore hole for monitoring the temperature of said lance head or molten heat in which the lance is inserted; signal lines connected to said temperature probe for conveying signals from said temperature probe whereby operation of said blowing lance is regulated in response to said signals; and a protective pipe pressurized with a gas disposed in the bore and surrounding said temperature probe assembly and the signal lines.

The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for controlling the pressure in the exhaust gas duct of a converter in a steel mill using a pressure control loop. To optimize the defined pressure setpoint for the pressure control loop so as to prevent excessive amounts of outside air from being drawn in via the converter mouth, the pressure setpoint is determined according to the invention by adapting a raw value based on the extent to which smoke or flames is/are formed at the mouth (120) of the converter (100).

A method of controlling a production process includes illuminating a portion of a workpiece undergoing a production process with a light having a selected wavelength, processing a portion of the workpiece, capturing a digital image of the light reflecting from a surface of the workpiece with a digital camera, performing, with a processor, a specular reflectance analysis of the digital image, and adjusting a production process parameter based on the specular reflectance analysis.

A furnace monitoring device includes an imaging unit to capture an image of combustion ash adhering to a monitoring position in a furnace, an evaluation unit to evaluate a deposition state of combustion ash on the basis of a monitoring image which is output from the imaging unit, and an alert unit to output an alert for the combustion ash on the basis of a result of evaluation from the evaluation unit.

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 cooking apparatus including an image capturer and a processor configured to identify a food object from a plurality of images obtained through the image capturer, adjust a capture interval at which an image of the food object is obtained in real time through the image capturer based on information about a cooking state change of the identified food object, and generate a video based on the captured image obtained according to the adjusted capture interval.

A method and system to determine one or more proportional particle group shares in flue gas of a recovery boiler (110) based on optical information gained from a flue gas sample. A processor (202) is used to read (301) a digital frame comprising the area under consideration, which represents at least a part of the surface of a sampler (120) kept in the flue gas flow of a recovery boiler. Particle group areas matching a color characteristic of the particle group comprised in the flue gas is determined (302) from the area under consideration. The joint area of the identified particle group areas is determined (304), and the share of the joint area from the total area is determined (305) as the proportional particle group share of the particle group.

Provided herein is a remote inspection apparatus for a heating tube of a steam generator, the apparatus including a fixing unit installed in a flange surface of a hand hole of the steam generator in a fixed manner, and having one or more rail guiders for guiding a guide rail into the steam generator; the guide rail configured to be guided by the rail guider to enter between the heating tube and a divider plate inside the steam generator; a rail driving unit fitted at one end of the guide rail and arranged outside the steam generator, and having a bobbin around which a steel belt is wound; and a probe feeding unit configured to receive a driving force from the rail driving unit through the steel belt to be moved along the guide rail, and having a band shaped probe extending in a length direction and an inspection camera fitted at one end of the probe.