ABSTRACT Heat analysis studies are vital for understanding and optimizing energy consumption in the oxygen steelmaking process. To control and optimize the process, a heat balance model that captures the amount of heat loss during the process is required. The model presented in this paper uses the concept of energy balance for computing the heat loss based on various hot metal composition, steel composition, tapping temperature, post-combustion ratio, and scrap percentage in the input feed. The heat loss calculated from the energy balance comprises of operational loss (heat loss through the mouth, converter wall, heat taken up by lance cooling water, bottom blowing gas, heat of formation of solid slag precipitates such as C2S (2CaO.SiO2), C3P (3CaO.P2O5), or undissolved fluxes, heat of dust, loss on ignition) and additional heat that can be utilized for scrap melting,. The results were validated with the plant data from Tata Steel. The analysis quantifies that as the amount Si in hot metal is increased from 0.4% to 0.8%, the upper limit of scrap quantity increased from 26% to 30% with a predicted heat loss of approximately 1.2%. Furthermore, the paper highlights various possibilities for process optimization by quantifying the effect of different parameters on heat loss.
