Sense and sensor ability

Process automation is becoming more important for the steel industry, as many varieties of inline sensors are starting to allow for real-time information and, in some cases, automatic regulation based upon an individual steelmaker's critical manufacturing parameters.

Today's steelmakers are becoming increasingly reliant upon sensors not just to produce the highest-quality steel possible, but to do so in the most efficient, cost-effective manner.

"The modern steel mill can't function without the use of sensors to help them monitor its production process," according to Chris Burnett, technical product manager for flat sheet gauging for metals applications, at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, Mass. He is also chairman of the sensor systems subcommittee of the Association of Iron and Steel Technologies (AIST).

In general, process automation is becoming more important for the steel industry, Rebecca Dettloff, marketing manager for SensoTech GmbH, said. She noted that many inline sensors, including the inline liquid concentration sensors that SensoTech makes, allow for real-time information, and in some cases automatic regulation based upon the steelmaker's critical parameters.

"Simply put, sensors help steel producers achieve the desired quality and performance required by the many applications that steel fills in modern society," Sean Marlow, a plant electrical maintenance engineer for Steel Dynamics Inc.'s (SDI's) flat-roll division in Butler, Ind. Additionally, he is the chairman of AIST's electrical applications technology committee.

He said sensors are used in every stage of the steelmaking process. This spans the iron ore mines and scrapyards that provide steelmaking raw materials to the blast and electric-arc furnaces producing the hot metal, through its casting, rolling and finishing operations and the labeling and packing of the final product.

This, Marlow said, includes a multitude of non-contact sensors that use technology rooted in electromagnetic fields, radiation detection, piezoelectric effects, laser scattering and interference and acoustics, as well as optical sensors utilizing the full spectrum of light, ranging from ultraviolet to visible to infrared wavelengths.

These sensors are used to collect a wide variety of data, including temperature, mass, pressure dimensions, flow, moisture, line speed, thickness, vibration, chemical composition and more.

"As steelmaking technology has evolved, that has necessitated that sensor technologies evolve with it," Burnett said, explaining that modern steelmaking not only relies on sensors to optimize the production process but...