Today’s increasing quality standards and higher energy costs demand more accurate and consistent control of power and resources. Steel processes such as coke oven heating, continuous casting, furnace reheating, hot rolling, forging, sintering and annealing are becoming more and more expensive. With energy prices at all-time highs, the cost of doing business has significantly increased. Steel facilities need the right tools to ensure they optimize energy usage across their facilities.
With the acquisition of LumaSense, Advanced Energy addresses these needs by providing the most accurate measurements in the industry, enabling steel facilities to maximize their output. Without this level of accuracy, operators are forced to reheat more often than necessary, wasting valuable time, money and energy. Advanced Energy offers solutions for metal processing, developed specifically for high temperature applications in the steel and primary metals industries.
The principal function of the Hot Strip Mill is to reheat semi-finished steel slabs of steel nearly to their melting point, then roll them thinner and longer and finally coiling up the lengthened steel sheet for transport to the next process.
Infrared sensors measure strip and sheet temperature so that rolling mill stands can be efficiently set to match the steel’s temperature. Sensors can be used to detect the presence of hot metal and accurately time the roll stand operation.
Pyrometers can be used to measure the roll temperature as water cools the roll during the quenching process. Steam is an issue with this application, requiring special spectral responses to accurately measure system temperature.
Mikron MC320M thermal imagers and shortwave Impac pyrometers (IS 140 and IS 320) by Advanced Energy are ideal solutions to ensure uniform temperature and keep the slab within its working temperature range. They can selectively control the quench zones so that only the higher temperature part of the slab is quenched to the maximum extent allowed, resulting in greater working time.
Ratio pyrometers e.g. ISR 6, ISR 6-TI, and IGAR 6 of Impac’s Advanced series help to minimize the effect of steam interference.
Customer Benefits at a glance:
- Highly accurate and very fast temperature measurement.
- Continuous process temperature monitoring.
- Process control and management.
- Documentation of process temperatures.
