A stable and efficient blast furnace operation requires proper control of hot metal and slag drainage from the hearth. Many operational problems such as non-dry casts, blow outs, excessive hearth lining wear and low-blast intake arise when the liquid level in the hearth exceeds the critical limit where hearth coke and deadman start to float. Since the direct measurement of the hearth liquid level is practically impossible due to high temperature and pressure inside the furnace, it is therefore important to estimate the liquid level in the hearth and display it to the operators on real-time basis for efficient cast management. This paper presents a system, called hearth liquid level monitoring (LLM), which simulates the liquid level and drainage behaviour of the furnace hearth. It is based on the theoretical hot metal and slag generation rate from the specific oxygen rate and the computed drainage rate from torpedo radar signals and the slag flow measurement system. The system advises the blast furnace operator when to initiate tapping and close the taphole when the liquid level is controlled. It also alerts operators when to use the larger drill bit diameter for opening the next cast.

The water cooled tuyere noses, through which hot blast is blown into the furnace, are exposed to very high temperature region of raceway inside the furnace. As a result the chances of rupture of cooling pipes within the tuyere nose are significantly high. The rupture causes water dripping into the furnace and if it continues and unnoticed for a prolonged period it lowers down the local raceway temperature and thus adversely affects the product hot metal and slag quality. Moreover, with heavy water leakage, there is a danger of explosion; monitoring of the cooling water is therefore essential. Despite the availability of water flow metre at each tuyere it is difficult to identify the leaking tuyere at the early stage unless the rupture size grows bigger and so the leakage. In several cases the furnace is forced to shut down to manually inspect the leakage occurring without prior knowledge of the exact tuyere number. Identification of water leakage at an early stage is therefore necessary to prevent process disturbances due to chilling of the furnace and avoid the unscheduled downtime for tuyere replacement. This paper presents a method to identify the water leakage from tuyere nose cooling circuit in blast furnace and the adverse effect of water leakage on the performance of the blast furnace. A system called water leak detection system is developed for different blast furnaces in Tata Steel Jamshedpur to monitor the water leakage through tuyere nose and identify the exact leaking tuyere based on a dimensionless number called leak detection factor.