@@winchesterdude5368 yes indeed, same here, trouble caused by environment, heat, splashing of molten steel, impact from electrode, incontrollable arching and many more
this video in no way conveys the sound of an eaf, nor could any video could. its one of those things you have to be there to know. its not so much that its loud, which it is, but the sound also goes right thru you. its truly a thing to behold/experience
Someone I know who works at a steel plant says that you can wear 2 types of hearing protection (as is required around them) and still be deafened by it because of how it vibrates in your bones (and thus, your skull as well). It's also easy to misunderstand the tremendous size of these things, along with the gigantic amounts of power. The person I mentioned said anyone who wears any electronic device meant to keep them alive is ordered away from the electric arc furnaces upon starting them.
There’s a two station LMF between the EAF and lab, and I can sit there in a windowless building and *know* when they’re melting without actually hearing it.
i remember back then in engineering school we once visited a steel plant with one of these, max. batch size was around 100 tons. the plant guide had us pass by that thing a mere 20 meters away or so while active and to this day i remember it as one of the most violent things i have ever witnessed in my entire life. you can literally feel your bones and body fluids shaking...
I remember when I was the new guy 23 years ago. Our mill was a DC furnace. When they operate, they go off like artillery. AC furnaces are a pleasure to be around by comparison.
Just like a farm boy in the 1940s working on the railroad for the first time and seeing the Union Pacific's Big Boy or the C&O's Allegheny locomotives.
That was me on my first day as I was getting escorted in to the office to take the online safety courses lol. I got a hard hat and safety glasses in the parking lot and no ear plugs. It was awesome!
furnace operator has control of the electric power..they turn it down on cold scrap and ramp up as they melt in..today the configurations are variable and computerized.the noise is unmistakable full power on cold scrap and electrodes blow up..everybody in the melt shop and managers outside the meltshop can hear it and know what happened
I'm guessing the big chunky cables on the right are powering the electrodes? I like how the first few times an arc is struck, you can see them sway a little bit. Assuming that is due to some intense electromagnetic fields forming and collapsing rapidly as tens of thousands of amps flow intermittently. I work around some big and powerful electrical equipment but nothing on this scale. Would love to witness this in person.
Exactly correct. Your hair will stand up if you get too close to them. I considered metallurgy from mechanical engineering in college , so I did a summer internship in a mill. It is an expeince you are not ready for that first day. The heat and the noise set new limits of what you will ever experience. Then there is the dirt.
That's precisely it. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ywaTX-nLm6Y.htmlsi=wBldmHQYSjo-x80U&t=565 This guy here wired a hundred car batteries in parralel to fry the crap out of large bolts and as the current peaks about 30,000 amps, you can see there cable fling around because of the magnetic forces.
I work in a steel mill, but not as close to the EAF as I’d like. I have yet to experience it in person. I have seen a KOBM furnace operate, and they’re equally as cool. Some people would be amazed at the scale of the parts of the process of making steel.
Most of the time yes it is with hydraulics.. although the factories in Russia and china typically utilize another system where there is a chain or a rope that leads to about 20 stationary bikes with pulleys and a bunch of chinamen pedal really fast when actuating the graphite electrodes. Usually, not always, one controls the switch gate, that’s what they call it, a switch gate and they can make the electrodes rise and lower
Yes, some old plant still used the old technology or if the furnace capacity small and the electrode weight were light, usually it can used AC motor as the actuators
They will have a direct hookup to the nearest plant. They usually have to tell said plant operators that they're going to be doing a heat before they actually do it, too, just so they're ready.
@@phuturephunk crazy! It’s amazing that there’s metal factories that use all that power and yet somehow the electric company stops it from dropping or affecting any customer’s power.
@@EphemeralProductions At least in the UK they usually get cheaper rates in return for agreeing to be cut off if the grid is in trouble too, there are some nice power prioritisation systems going on - network frequency management is fascinating :)
yeah haha the voltage is super low, i have litteraly measured that with a fluke 117 directly, i work as a regulation/measurement/automation maintenence person so when the electrodes don't wanna go down or "wiggle" up and down too much, they call me. Last time, the voltage measurement convertor (36v AC to 4-20ma DC) for electrode 1 had died, but I had to check the step down measurement transformer, so there I went and measured. Gotta love Fluke quality, and accuracy, you can measure those miliamps as well as those hundreds of volts. Of course you tell the operator to put the power to the lowest level first, you don't wanna play with that stuff :)
You only measure the output from the VT or CT (step down transformer), from both of them will be connected to the sensor transducer for measuring the current and the voltage, and most sensor the output will be 4-20 mA, it'll be feedback for the automatic regulation. The plant in the video is using hydraulic system as the actuators
@@windshield11 I believe you are the expert, both means in my statement was for measuring the actual I and V, and the actual regulations inside the PLC is the impedance (Z), the achieve the good Z and the arch length inside the furnace, it will prevent the possibility the arch hit the others conductors, such as steel pipes, etc
At my plant, with around 130t per heat. The electrode could stand around 100-150 heats, but it also depends on the scrap conditions, when it hitting the scraps or the electrodes controls doesn't works
@@Digidi4 not exactly the same, the smell is more "dry", mostly the furnace dust already consist of another material, like lime stone, so not pure metal
Sometimes it's happenings, during the first arch and many dust from the sponge iron or scrap, but after several arching, the steel become molten and ready to tapping
@@FixedFace yes, it might be true, it's an old plant, the automation control also still used the old technology, and if you compare to the new plant, it'll looks so much different, the holes between the electrode which is covered by refractory cement also need to be considered why the flash and dust coming out from the EAF.
It's a conveyor area for the raw materials, such as sponge iron & limestone, for continuous feeding to the eaf, it's safe to work around that area. Sometimes the material wasn't at center area, so they push it several times
PT KRAKATAU STEEL?? I have seen this video from my friend when he was working at a smelting factory owned by PT. KRAKATAU STEEL Yakin aku njir ini milik PT KRAKATAU STEEL
I thought I had brain damage at first but then I replayed the video and the radio chatter is definitely Indonesian. I might have inspected this mill in a previous life.
