The project aims at shortening the tap-to-tap time in oxygen steel plants in order to increase their productivity while reaching a very high hitting ratio at turndown.

The main target of this proposal is to develop a completely new method for controlling the BOF process by using an original in-blow heterogeneous sampler and a dedicated laser analytical method. Associated with a metallurgical model, the data obtained with the heterogeneous samplers could lead to dynamically assess the state of the refining progress and to define the corrective actions in order to allow a safe direct tapping practice.

This new process control method could also find interesting applications in the EAF steel making. The new analytical methodology dedicated to heterogeneous samples could equally profit to other steel making steps such as secondary metallurgy ..¿