Intelligent Manufacturing: NISCO’s urban steelworks production is now controlled remotely

An integrated control centre has been built at the Nanjing Iron and Steel Co in China’s Jiangsu Province.

Sited some 7km from NISCO’s plants, which are based in Nanjing City’s Liuhe District, the streamlined and modern ICC building is where full-process, centralised control takes place for five blast furnaces, three sintering plants, three stockyards, a pelletising plant, three coke ovens and two chemical recovery plants.

The centre, which creates a new fusion between steelworks and city, remotely controls these procedures for the production of 10 million tonnes of hot metal a year.

Its material tracking system is based on the ICC smart platform - a sector first. This has transformed ironmaking production from experience-based decision-making to digital and intelligent levels, advancing partial optimisation to holistic dynamic dimensions. 

 

Steel production’s Smart Brain

360 screens in the 1,600m² ICC room monitor and control displays of real-time production data and status and operations and management across NISCO’s three km² site is under its control.

CISDI’s smart platform has integrated the steelworks’ 56 control rooms, 1,800-plus monitor and control systems and over 290 automation control functions. Staff can manage and control production lines seven kilometres away.

A unique and smart control system to increase safety and environment protection features an electronic fence, video interconnection, wireless trunking communication, 3D visualisation and collection and distribution connection technologies.

These smart features mean NISCO can monitor real-time conditions for onsite equipment, emissions and staff and ensure all sources of danger are instantly identified and eradicated, while technological and management methods efficiently reduce carbon emissions.

 

Innovative material tracking system – playing a critical role in cost reduction

The pioneering material tracking system CISDI has created for NISCO is a first for China’s steel sector.

A digital, twin-based NISCO production process is vividly displayed on a 3D visualisation system - from the unloading of raw materials at the wharf to their primary blending and proportioning, followed by their charging into the blast furnace’s stockhouse.

By following a cursor on the screens, operations staff can capture all material flow and understand each procedure’s transfer, storage and mass data.

The most logical way for the steel sector to make savings at an integrated plant is by reducing the cost of ironmaking materials.

In ironmaking, NISCO’s system keeps track of more than 900 belt conveyors, around 2,000 flow items, 220 storage positions and 117 metering points.

A dynamic balance of production materials, accurate control of production tempo and efficient analysis and tracing of product quality have all been achieved.

As a result, the sinter ratio with a grade 1 basicity level has risen by 7 per cent and the return fine ratio has fallen by 4 per cent. The blended iron to silicon standard ratio is reduced by 0.1 per cent.

These achievements lay a solid foundation for smooth blast furnace production.

 

Lean production management leads to record techno-economic indicators

When CISDI developed the smart platform it combined NISCO’s production expertise into 200-plus assistant operation models for smart proportioning, blast furnace stack mirroring and temperature forecasting and profile optimisation.

More than 400 reports from the platform have enabled a number of record indicators to be achieved:

✧       A furnace temperature forecasting accuracy ratio of over 90 per cent

✧       A 10kg/t higher coal ratio

✧       A fuel ratio reduction of at least 20kg/t

✧       Zero hanging incidents in a continuous five-month period at the five blast furnaces

✧       The blast furnaces are operated in a standardised way to ensure smoothness and stability. Since the ICC was put online, their output and blasting volumes have risen steadily.

NISCO’s production organisation has been transformed and conventional borders have been removed. Borderless coordination across the plants brings operational and production control to wider, deeper dimensions.

The ICC has integrated and streamlined conventional organisation, reduced the number of workshops by 42 per cent, decreased section or department numbers by 53 per cent and removed 480 workers from posts in hazardous conditions.

 

From its urban location seven kilometres away, NISCO’s ICC has control of a wide range of production procedures

 

 

The main ICC room at NISCO