Monitoring the impact of the intensity of blowing of an inert gas to the visual character of the molten steel surface

Steel Companies use a ladle furnace refining process. The main feature of this ladle technology exists in refining under non-oxidizing atmosphere and support of slag-metal reaction through stirring by Ar gas injection, for a desired long time due to the temperature compensation by arc heating. A CCD camera, placed above the ladle monitors the slag formation (so called eyes) that has a different temperature and therefore a different color than the metal. We developed the automatic software capable to analyze the homogeneity of the surface and characterize features of the molten steel level such us presence of slag clusters. In our paper, the method for visual monitoring and automated retrieval of slag clusters taken from the CCD camera will be described.