Energy-optimized control for the walking beam furnaces at the Bremen steel mill

Heavy industry process plants, such as the walking beam furnace (WBF) of the hot rolling mill of Arcelor Mittal Bremen (AMB), have an extensive energy consumption. With the aim of reducing the consumption of resources for ecological and economic reasons, a new control concept for the WBF is the main objective of the MPC_HBO project, which is funded by the Bremer Aufbau Bank (BAB). The project focuses on process analysis and the development of model-based controller architecture in cooperation with AMB. Due to the slow but complex dynamics of the HBO and a simultaneously small number of measurement points, physical and empirical methods for modelling are combined in order to achieve sufficient model quality.