Sharif Digital Repository

In this study main reactive power calculation methods are evaluated and compared. Furthermore, a novel simple method that can be used for calculation of reactive power in electric arc furnace (EAF) plants is proposed. The focus here is on their application in the control system of static VAr compensators (SVCs). SVC can compensate only the fundamental harmonic component. So the reactive power signal used in the control system should be sensitive only to the main harmonic component. In addition, the reactive power calculation should be fast enough that SVC can follow the quick changes of the load to mitigate the flicker efficiently. To compare various reactive power calculation methods and to... 

The paper presents a conceptual study on modification of the electric arc furnace (EAF) slag doors in order to allow removal of the excess slag from the EAF. The idea behind additional slag doors is to allow deslagging of the bath in certain unfavorable cases when the slag height is too great. Slags which exceed the optimal height cause unnecessary refractory corrosion and additional energy losses. The study proposes symmetric slag doors comprised of two hatches, i.e. upper and lower. The upper hatch is intended to decrease the slag height to the optimal level, while the lower hatch can be used to completely deslag the EAF at tapping. In this manner, tilting of the EAF is not necessary. A... 

This paper presents an electric arc furnace (EAF) optimization framework intended to define optimal control profiles for the EAF, in order to increase its efficiency and thus reduce the energy consumption. The framework aims to minimize controllable losses and to maximize energy transfer to the bath and, consequently, minimize the operational costs. This is achieved through improved actuation of the EAF inputs, i.e., transformer power, oxygen lancing, and carbon addition. To achieve maximal energy transfer to the bath and to reduce the heat losses from the arcs, proper properties of the slag, such as foaminess and basicity, are a subject of considerable attention. The framework is designed... 

The ability of static VAr compensators (SVC) to reduce the flicker caused by electric arc furnaces and other variable VAr loads depends on their speed, which is limited by delays in reactive power measurement and thyristor ignition. In this paper, a predictive method is proposed to compensate the delay time and, hence, to improve the SVC performance. Previous samples of the load reactive power are used to predict its future values. Predicted VAr is then applied as a reference for reactive power compensation. © 2006 IEEE  

The paper studies the effects of solid and liquid steel properties on the heat transfer coefficient (HTC) in electric arc furnaces (EAFs). Mathematically speaking, the HTC is a function of solid and liquid steel properties. Different velocities of the bath cause different flow paths around the solid particles and therefore different HTCs - a computational issue that has not been addressed yet. Therefore, a simplified calculation model is proposed, intended for HTC estimation according to the EAF conditions. Although many studies investigated this topic, most of them either assume unconventional conditions for the EAF operation, are computationally complex or focus on a specific case; and... 

The paper presents a comprehensive electric arc furnace (EAF) model, developed for simulation and model-based control of the EAF processes. The model consists of three sub models, i.e., (i) arc model; (ii) chemical and slag model; and (iii) heat-transfer model. Arc model predicts the amount of energy dissipated from the arcs using arc currents and arc lengths; chemical and slag model calculates chemical energy and changes of elements/compounds, slag height and slag quality; while the heat-transfer model uses calculations of the other two models in order to establish a reference energy system (RES) for each zone in the EAF due to the variations in arc length, slag height, and bath height. The... 

In this paper, a conceptual study and quantification of using a thermophotovoltaic system (TPV) to convert incident radiation on furnace panels to electrical energy is presented. In typical electric arc furnaces (EAF), a considerable amount of energy is wasted during the melting process, that is, steel enthalpy, off-gas extraction, vessel cooling, slag enthalpy, and others. Although a remarkable share of the energy is wasted in circulating water, the contained exergy is simply too low to be considered for heat recovery (under 0.5% of input exergy) in comparison to energy content of the extracted gasses and slag. In the performed study, a TPV power output is calculated as a function of arc... 

Electric arc furnaces are used to make steel from scrap iron in steel industry. Nowadays, the aim of more researches in this area is to increase yield of furnace and it's compatibility with environment. One of the methods to achieve these purposes is to control the off-gas system as relative pressure in furnace would be kept negative. Because the combustion gases inside the furnace must not leak into the plant environment. However for preventing of loss of energy, the amount of this negative number must be small. In this paper, new intelligent control method named fuzzy emotional control, applied to off- gas system to control the relative pressure in the furnace and its result is compared to... 

The nonlinear and time varying nature of electric arc furnaces (EAFs) create flicker, harmonics, and voltage/current unbalances. Nowadays to improve the performance of EAFs and the power quality problems of electrical systems around them high speed compensators like STATCOM are needed. This paper uses a time domain model for electric arc furnaces and a new model of STATCOM respectively for creating and improving mentioned power quality problems. In this paper, first we investigate and simulate electric arc furnace and STATCOM using SIMULINK/PSB. Second, we simulate a network including them completely. The proposed models take into account arcing conditions and associated effects improvement... 

The paper presents a computational model and the corresponding algorithm for estimating the arc energy distribution to conductive, convective and radiative heat transfer in an electric arc furnace (EAF). The proposed algorithm uses channel arc model (CAM) in order to compute the distribution of the arc energy through empirical equations (to approximate arc radius), ideal gas law (to approximate arc density) and results of magneto-hydro-dynamic (MHD) models (to approximate arc pressure, temperature and velocity). Results obtained using the proposed algorithm are comparable with other similar studies; however, in contrast to other arc-energy distribution models, this model requires only two... 

This paper presents a new compensating system, which consists of a shunt active filter and passive components for mitigating voltage and current disturbances arising from an Electric Arc Furnace (EAF). A novel control strategy is presented for the shunt active filter. An extended method based on instantaneous power theory in a rotating reference frame is developed for extraction of compensating signals. Since voltages at the Point of Common Coupling (PCC) contain low frequency interharmonics, conventional methods cannot be used for dc voltage regulation. Therefore, a new method is introduced for this purpose. The passive components limit the fast variations of load currents and mitigate... 

AC electric arc furnaces (EAFs) highly reduce power quality of the network by generating disturbances such as flicker and harmonics. These disturbances are due to the nonlinear electromagnetic and thermal field behaviors of the AC arcs. Analysis of these nonlinear behaviors is required for improving power quality in the network. This paper presents a three-dimensional finite element modeling of the electromagnetic fields in an AC three-phase electric arc furnace. The model includes the electrodes, arcs and molten bath. Current density, voltage and magnetic field intensity in the arcs, molten bath and electrodes are predicted as a result of applying the three-phase AC voltages to the EAF.... 

This paper discusses the application of unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) for improving power quality of a system supplying an electric arc furnace (EAF). The UPQC includes combined series and shunt active filters sharing a common DC link. It is used to mitigate voltage disturbances and compensate for reactive power, harmonics and interharmonics. A novel control strategy for the UPQC is presented. As voltages at the point of common coupling contain low-frequency interharmonics, conventional methods cannot be used for extracting voltage reference signals. In the proposed method, voltage references are extracted using a phase-locked loop to generate sinusoidal waveforms. Current... 

In this research, the effects of nano-sized MgO in Al2O 3-SiC composites were investigated. The overall changes in the density and mechanical properties of sintered samples (hardness, bending strength and toughness) were evaluated. After mixing, drying and uniaxial compaction of the powders, they were first heat-treated at low temperature in an electric furnace to remove any residuals. They were then heat-treated at high temperature (1700 °C) inside a graphite furnace in argon atmosphere for sintering (at normal and high pressure). The content of MgO in the Al 2O3-10 vol% SiC composite was 0, 500, 1000, and 1500 ppm. Thefracture toughness(KIC)of sintered composite with 10... 

Cantilever arrays with nearest-neighbor interactions are considered to obtain the pull-in parameters. The interactions between the neighboring beams are a combination of the Casimir force and the electrostatic force with the first-order fringing field correction. A set of coupled nonlinear boundary value problems and a set of coupled nonlinear equations arise in the distributed and lumped parameter modeling of the array, respectively. The models are simulated numerically to obtain the pull-in parameters of the arrays with different number of beams. The pull-in parameters of large arrays converge to constant values, which are independent of the number of beams in the array. The constants... 

In this paper, primary resonance of a double-clamped microbeam has been investigated. The Microbeam is predeformed by a DC electrostatic force and then driven to vibrate by an AC harmonic electrostatic force. Effects of midplane stretching, axial loads and damping are considered in modeling. Galerkin's approximation is utilized to convert the nonlinear partial differential equation of motion to a nonlinear ordinary differential equation. Afterward, a combination of homotopy perturbation method and the method of multiple scales are utilized to find analytic solutions to the steady-state motion of the microbeam, far from pull-in. The effects of different design parameters on dynamic behavior... 

This paper deals with the problem of static instability of nano switches under the effect of Casimir force and electrostatic actuation. The nonlinear fringing field effect has been accounted for in the model. Using a Galerkin decomposition method and considering only one mode, the nonlinear boundary value problem describing the static behavior of nano-switch, is reduced to a nonlinear boundary value ordinary differential equation which is solved using the homotopy perturbation method (HPM). In order to ensure the precision of the results, the number of included terms in the perturbation expansion has been investigated. Results have been compared with numerical results and also with... 

This paper presents an extended Kantorovich approach to investigate the vibrational behavior of electrically actuated rectangular microplates. The model accounts for the electric force of the excitation and for the applied in plane loads. Starting from a one term Galerkin approximation and following the extended Kantorovich procedure, the partial differential equation governing the microplate vibration, is discretized to two ordinary differential equation with constant coefficients. These equations are then solved analytically and iteratively with a rapid convergence procedure for finding microplate natural frequencies and modeshapes. Results in some specific cases are validated against... 

In this work the effect of nano- and microZrO2 addition on the densification and hydration resistance of MgO–CaO refractories was investigated. 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8 wt% ZrO2 was added to MgO–CaO refractories that contain 35 wt% CaO. The crystalline phases and microstructure characteristics of specimens sintered at 1650 °C for 5 h in an electric furnace were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively. The physical properties are reported in terms of bulk density, apparent porosity and hydration resistance. Results show that with addition of ZrO2 the bulk density and hydration resistance of the samples increased while apparent porosity decreased. Also... 

Up to 8wt. % of Nano-iron oxide was added to CaO refractory matrix. The crystalline phases and microstructure characteristics of specimens sintered at 1650°C for 5h in an electric furnace were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively. The physical properties are reported in terms of bulk density, apparent porosity and hydration resistance. The mechanical behavior was studied by a cold crushing strength (CCS) and flexural strength at 1200°C test. As a result, it was found that the presence of Nano-iron oxide in the CaO refractory matrix induced 2CaO.Fe2O3 (C2F), CaO.Fe2O3 (CF) and 3CaO.Al2O3 (C3A) phase's formation, which improved the sintering...