AISTech 2019 — Proceedings of the Iron & Steel Technology Conference

6–9 May 2019, Pittsburgh, Pa., USA

DOI 10.1000.377.116

Tenaris Tamsa’s Ladle Furnace Electrode Consumption Reduction

Francisco Raul Aguirre Ortiz, Pablo Enoc Hernández Paredes.

Tubos de Acero de México, S.A.

Km 433.7 Carretera México-Veracruz Vía Xalapa, C.P. 91697, Veracruz, Ver. México.

Keywords: EAF, Electric Arc Furnace, Power Profile, Electrical Profile

INTRODUCTION
LF1 Operations
Due to steelshop lay out, LF1 needs to erogate more energy than LF2: it is the first station that receives steel tapped from
electric arc furnace, almost all ferroalloys are added there, and it is the previous station to vacuum degassing process (40-50%
of production), which produces an important temperature loss that is compensated by rising exit temperature at LF1. In figure
1 is presented a diagram that outlines LF1 operations, an important aspect that will be explained to be relevant for this work is
that heating periods were performed any time regardless argon flow level.

Figure 1. Diagram of LF1 operations.

Electrical Operation.
LF1 works with a 20MVA transformer with 17 taps. From user HMI is possible to change only tap, current is already configured
by an impedance set point.

© 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. 1133

Historically LF1 has operated using Tap 8 fixed, which was the starting point for the tests described in this work. In figure 2
is shown an approximate evolution of electrical parameters from TAP 8 to 17.

Figure 2. Voltage and current configuration for LF1

It is also worth to mention, that occasionally small water leak events have been detected produced by arcing over roof water
cooled panels. These events had been an issue for quality (Hydrogen pick-up) and productivity (repairing stoppage), and they
have prevented to test longer arc configurations (higher voltages) in order to not increase risk of having more frequent events
or more severe in terms of water spill. In figure 3 is possible to see an example of a water leak.

Figure 3. Picture of a water leak on LF1 roof panel.

For this work, two operative conditions will be characterized on their influence over arc stability and heating efficiency in order
to determine feasibility of increasing transformer tap to save electrode consumption without increasing risk of having water
leak events. These conditions are the following:
• Initial period: Immediately after tapping when ladle arrives to LF1, there is a 5 minutes period with strong stirring to
homogenize tapping additions that remain solid. In order to save time, heating is also performed all along this period,
which is not optimal for electric operation, since slag is not yet completely formed and there is strong disturbance
from argon stirring.
• Argon stirring levels: Even if stirring is necessary to homogenize steel in terms of chemistry and temperature, it is
also known that it causes arc disturbances that reduce heating efficiency and promote arcing. In this work it will be
characterized working with two different argon flows that are considered by our operative practices as “weak” and
“strong” stirring, even if slag is already form.

1134 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

 EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE

First trials
It was planned to test 4 more taps than normal operation (up to Tap 12). First trials aimed to determine possibility to work with
each of the selected taps by heating for about 5-10 minutes periods with strong argon flow, since it is the most flexible condition
in terms of operative needs (heating whenever needed regardless argon flow).
After some short tests it was determined that it is possible to work with high argon flow up to Tap 10, since Tap 11 already
showed a significant impact on arc stability as it can be observed in figure 4 and 5. In the same figure the highlighted area
corresponds to Tap 11 operation with low argon (weak stirring), which indicates that it is possible to work above tap 10 if
Argon flow is limited, presenting even a better performance on arc stability than observed on Tap 8 with strong stirring.

Figure 4. Impedance behavior with tap 8 to 11. Highlighted operation with low argon stirring (1)

Figure 5. Power behavior with tap 8 to 11. Highlighted operation with low argon stirring (1)

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With collected data (1) and using electrode consumption equation (1) it was calculated the potential electrode saving by
implementing each tap from 8 to 12 (considering stirring restrictions). The electrode consumption equation is shown below:

Kg/MT: Electrode Consumption in Kilogram per metric ton

C1 and C2: Tip and oxidation constants respectively
I: Current
Pon: Connected Time

Benefit was calculated in % of reduction, considering that constants remain the same. This is shown in Table I:

Table I. Percentage of electrode consumption reduction corresponding to each tap operation.

%Electrode 
Transformer  Power 
TAP  MVA  MW  KA  Factor  Consumption 
Reduction 
8  19.1  15.0  34.1  0.78  0% 
9  20.2  15.9  35.2  0.79  0% 
10  20.1  16.2  34.0  0.81  8% 
11  20.1  16.3  32.5  0.82  17% 
12  19.7  16.8  31.6  0.85  23% 

From first trials, it was proposed to perform more tests using TAP 12 to obtain at least 23% of electrode saving. Since arc
instability does not allow using strong stirring with this TAP, it is also necessary to determine if it is feasible to restrict heating
periods using low argon flow only.

TAP 12 trials
Next stage trials had the following objectives:
• Characterize heating rate using tap 8 during initial period, weak and strong stirring (previous practice), and tap 12
with low argon flow (proposed new practice).
• Characterize roof cooling water temperature behavior with Tap 8 and Tap 12.
• Verify if eliminating initial period heating could have an impact on desulphurization (since one critical condition to
remove Sulphur is temperature).
72 heating periods with Tap 8 and Tap 12 were followed, taking notes of initial and final temperature, power on, additions
made during heating, argon flow and whether it corresponded to an initial period or not.

Heating rate
In figure 6 it is possible to observe heating rate in °C per minute corresponding to each test scenario (Energy loss due to
additions was considered):

1136 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

 Figure 6. Heating rate to verify heating efficiency
From figure 6 some conclusions can already be made:
• Tap 8 initial heating has the lowest heating rate, which can be explained by the solid material that is still being melted.
It confirms the assumption that slag is not yet formed and conditions are not suitable neither to have an optimal heat
transfer nor preventing arcing effect.
• Between Tap 8 and Tap 12 at similar stirring conditions there is around 8% increase in heating rate, which is similar
to active power increase that was observed during short trials (11% of increase from 15 to 16.8 MW).

Roof cooling water temperature behavior

During heating periods cooling water always experiment a temperature increase, final temperature will depend on power on
time, arc exposure and intensity. It was calculated the temperature change from the followed heating periods and plotted average
and standard deviation as it is shown in figure 7:

Figure 7. Roof cooling water temperature increase during heating periods

From figure 7 it can be observed an effect of higher voltage/power (Tap12) that increase heating rate of cooling water. Even if
a higher increasing temperature is corroborated, no arcing evidence have been found, which could be a result of a more stable
electrical operation due to low levels of argon stirring.

Initial desulphurization:
To determine if initial desulphurization could be affected, a short test was performed by comparing Sulphur values (average
and Standard deviation) after initial high stirring periods without heating against average initial Sulphur from previous month
(normal operation), observing no impact on eliminating heating at this period since sulfur values are even lower, see figure 8:

© 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. 1137

 Figure 8. Initial Sulphur value without initial heating against normal operation of previous month

RESULTS
After characterizing Tap 12 operation, practice was modified to perform a long test and validate electrode consumption. The
following conditions were established:
• Perform initial 5 minutes high stirring period without heating.
• Heating periods using TAP 12 instead of TAP 8
• Use only low argon stirring during power on to favor stable arc operation and avoid arcing.
Results were observed from the first month of implementation, and after 6 months of being implemented it could be
concluded:
• 30% of electrode consumption from LF1 was reduced, from a typical value of 0.30 to 0.20 Kgs/MT (see figure 9)
and it is maintained up to the date this manuscript was written (11 months).
• From the moment the new practice was implemented, no roof water leak due to arcing has been identified.

Figure 9. LF electrode consumption evolution against objective.

1138 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

 CONCLUSIONS
Expected results of this work were related mainly to modify electrical profile to reduce electrode consumption. Finally it was
obtained a more suitable operative practice that not only has already proven to be more efficient (30% of electrode consumption
savings), but also safer by adjusting Argon stirring and slag formation practice to improve arc stability in LF. The risk of a
water leak has been eliminated since heating is avoided during initial homogenizing period and high argon stirring moments.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank to all personnel of operations and technology department from Tenaris Tamsa’s steelshop for the provided support
to reach the objectives. We also would like to thank Tenaris Tamsa for the opportunity to participate in this project and to all
that provided valuable feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript.
Special thanks to Jackson Kuntze and Enrique Garza from SDK for their valuable support and analysis during first trials.

REFERENCES
1. Jackson Kuntze / Enrique Garza, SDK TAMSA Visit Report, March 2018.

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