One of Europe's largest steel makers, producing a wide range of high-quality quality strip steel products for demanding markets such as construction, automotive, and machines.

In Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BOS), the critical problem of slopping occurs when foaming slag exceeds the height of the vessel and overflows, causing spillage that must be contained and then cleaned up.

The result is metal loss, process disruption, environmental contamination and even a threat to employee safety. The vessel and surrounding equipment must be inspected for damage. If any equipment has been compromised, repairs must be made to ensure that it is safe to resume operations.

Because basic oxygen steelmaking is a complex process with a large number of adjustable parameters, it is very difficult for even experienced process operators to understand and counteract the various factors that lead to slopping, especially since impending slopping can be anticipated only a few seconds in advance, leaving too little time to react.

The AI engine behind Process Booster, aivis®, was fed the raw historical process data of one BOF whereas the signal of a photo sensor could be used as marker to identify the slopping within the data. aivis® then performed a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) including a report that classified all slopping occurrences into two distinct scenarios. Each scenario told its own story of how the incidents built up over time, which of the hundreds of sensor signals were relevant, and how their behavior changed over time. This allowed the process engineer to interpret and understand these scenarios and ultimately develop countermeasures.