Initial situation: In the iron and steel industry as well as other energy-intensive industries, a variety of different thermal process […]
MACO Pilot – Optimisation of the mixed-acid online monitoring and control in stainless steel pickling plants
Initial situation
- Economic pressure on European steel sector demands high flexible and favourable production
- Especially the pickling step is of high importance for stainless steel production
- High process flexibility needs a fast adjustment of defined concentrations in industrial mixed-acid pickling baths for achieving consistently high product qualities and plant productivity.
- Within the RFCS project FLEXPROMUS an innovative method for continuous HF-HNO3-mixed-acid online analysis was successfully developed
- First prototype tests at stainless steel strip pickling lines showed very promising results
Project objectives
- Optimisation of online-measuring-technique for continuous concentration monitoring in HNO3-HF-mixed acids
- Optimisation of concentration monitoring and control at stainless steel pickling facilities
- Online-measuring technique prototype test installations at stainless steel strip and wire rod pickling plants and acid regeneration plant
Innovative process approaches
- Continuous online-concentration monitoring of mixed acid pickling solutions by means of model based measuring technique
- Development of a „closed loop“-concentration control model for stainless steel strip pickling lines on basis of online-concentration data
- Development of a pickling programme management model for wire-rod pickling plants
- Concept development for improvement of existing European mixed acid pickling plants by online monitoring and control
Current results (as of 12/2017)
- Further optimisation of online-concentration measuring system set-up
- Database enhancement for online concentration calculation model
- Realisation of operational prototype online-measuring system installations
- Development of „closed-loop“-concentration control model for strip pickling line
Outlook
- Operational testing and further optimisation of prototype online-measuring system installations at stainless pickling plants
- Test and optimisation of the „closed-loop“ concentration control model
- Development and testing of pickling-programme management model for wire-rod pickling plants
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