Together with Tecnalia and MSI, Sidenor has implemented monitoring and control at plant level in its secondary metallurgy, continuous casting and rolling facilities. Thanks to the digitisation of these processes, the operation of factories in the steel sector can be optimised.
The development was based on the paradigm of decomposition, coordination and optimisation of plant operations, thus achieving their monitoring and control.
The three companies have worked on developing a digital twin of Sidenor’s steelmaking process, with the aim of reducing the number of surface defects in the final micro-alloyed steel products; this will ensure a good performance of the manufacturing processes related to the occurrence of defects in secondary metallurgy, continuous casting and hot rolling sub-processes.
This has led to the creation of an online monitoring and alarm tool for secondary metallurgy and continuous casting processes. Likewise, optimisation tools were developed in order to obtain the optimal values of the parameters which impact secondary metallurgy, continuous casting and rolling processes, thus achieving a good performance of each sub-process and minimising the number of defects in the final product. In the future, it will be possible to reduce even more the reject rates of the finished product, thus optimising sub-process parameters.
This development has been carried out within the framework of the European COCOP project, which has recently finalised and was conducted in cooperation with partners from six EU countries. The initiative is part of the H2020 programme.