“Many steel mills have a handheld camera and they maybe go in once a week or every couple of days to take some pictures of the ladle,” explains ANT Automation’s Javier Barreiro. “While these surveys can provide valuable information, the probability of catching a hot spot is very low during a routine inspection. You could be in normal operation and have a refractory brick break creating a hot spot in less than a minute.”
Continuous monitoring is clearly the answer but it isn’t practical, cost-effective or safe using manual imaging. For many steel mills, ANT Automation’s CIRA (continuous, infrared analysis) platform is providing a good solution. It is an integrated machine vision system that is totally automatic, requiring no human intervention.
Javier Barreiro continues: “We capture a hot spot in the early stages by analysing and tracking the history of the ladle. Every ladle has a unique ID and it is imaged from multiple angles during each use; historical data provides insight into any problem areas. The system differentiates between developing hot spots and normal plant activity such common splashes, spill-over or overflow.”
W: www.flir.com