Approach Taken to Avoid Process Upsets At Stelco Lake Erie Blast Furnace #1

摘要

Upon coming ahead from a scheduled maintenance stop in November of 1998, Stelco Lake Erie's #1 Blast Furnace experienced erratic operation that led to a chilled hearth and a subsequent five-day furnace outage. Following repairs, it took a further five days to re-establish normal operation. The root cause of the failure was found to be a faulty natural gas injection flow transmitter. To prevent a recurrence of this problem and avoid similar problems in the future, a series of "reasonability checks" were programmed into the control system to flag operational anomalies that may otherwise go undetected by the Operator. For example, this particular incident would likely have been avoided if the Operator had been made aware that the hydrogen content of the off gas was inconsistent with the reported level of natural gas injection.